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“Just slow down and take a breath!”  “Why don’t you just relax?”  “Stop worrying about that.”  These are a few of the phrases I had been told (repeatedly) while on my Crazy Speed Train to Burn Out City.  And do you think these “encouraging words” calmed me and helped me to recenter?  Heck no!  In fact, what hearing these phrases would do is burn the hairs on the back of my neck and turn me into an enraged She-Hulk.  “What do you mean ‘RELAX’???  Are you insane???  I don’t have time to relax!  GRRRRR!!!!!  Hulk smash!”  Well, I think you get the picture.

I recently went on a family vacation back to the states.  Before I left for our vacation, I would have told you that I’m a mess and everyone else is handling things so much better than I am.  When I returned, I quickly caught on to the fact that everyone else is still doing exactly what I was doing…on the speed train to burn out and just plain super stressed.  When you’re that stressed, you don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel because in your reasoning, there is no light.  You can’t find your path out of the stress because you are too busy drowning in stress, you have been screaming and crying about it to realize you are probably only swimming in a foot of water if you would only stand up.

I took my vacation time.  Yes, I really took vacation.  I still checked my email to keep it from piling up so I wouldn’t miss anything really important, but I told my coworkers and subordinates that they should only contact me if something extremely serious happened that couldn’t wait until I returned and I put my out of office reply on.  So, back to my vacation.  In many ways, it was a typical vacation…a trip to an amusement park, visiting with family and friends…but I even did that better than ever.  For the first time in my whole adult life, I determined that I was going to enjoy every single encounter I had with every person and savor every moment.  I didn’t think about the next place to go or squeezing as many activities into my day.  I just wanted to spend as much time with as many people as possible.  It was fabulous.

I did something else during my vacation, something that changed me.  I determined that I was going to take care of myself.  My health had been adversely affected by all of the stress and I was becoming no good for anyone.  Taking care of myself meant that this was going to have to be a crossroads where I had to start managing stress in a different way.

When the anxiety began to mount in preparation for my first day back to work, I talked myself out of it before I got too far in.  (Yoga breathing is awesome.)  I spoke truth to myself…”I’m going to have a great first day back”, “I can do this.”  My first day back was a Saturday, of all days, but you know what?  It was a great day.  I saw some smiles and heard lots of welcome backs. 

Today at work, I had such a great conversation with my boss.  He has been the biggest source of my stress and anxiety.  I think he unintentionally broke me the first week I was here and I have been stressed ever since.  I was so stressed that I started to get paranoid that everyone was out to revel in seeing me fall on my face and I struggled not to give them the satisfaction, particularly my boss.  But I had an honest conversation with him today.  I told him how I had been feeling and the awful place all of the stress put me in.  He smiled and assured me that none of that is based in reality.  He encouraged me to learn as much as I can while I’m here and take advantage of the unique challenges of this duty location. 

I can’t say that I have everything figured out now and that I flipped the switch and will now never be overrun by stress.  But I can say that I am making a conscious effort to manage stress, be realistic, and take care of myself. 

Most of us exist in a competitive world.  We are constantly trying to establish our place in the “pecking order” of the workplace…make a name for ourselves.  We listen carefully for those brass ring-offering opportunities and try to raise our hands higher than anyone else.  At other times, we hesitate to volunteer for just a moment and when we see no one else is stepping up to the plate, we quickly consult our inner pep-talker to see if he tells us whether volunteering will somehow set us apart from the mundane and everyday.

We work with those who always seem to put themselves out there.  You know the ones I mean.  Maybe it’s you.  They always volunteer to stay late so you can go home, work the extra jobs so no one else has to, and cover for anyone who can’t do what needs to be done for whatever reason.  They are often the people who make you feel guilty instead of relieved or grateful that you can count on them. 

But wait a second.  Stop and see things through the “true reality” lens.  It is likely you actually do your fair share of putting yourself out there.  I personally struggled up until fairly recently with this issue.  Then someone told me, “It’s okay to be non-essential sometimes.  When someone else steps up, sometimes you should just sit back and enjoy it.”  I realized there will be plenty of times when I will need to be essential.  There will be plenty of opportunities for me to be the hero.  But I don’t always have to be Superman.  Sometimes, I can be Jimmy Olsen.

I fell in love with a boy….
He was a few years older than I was.  I hadn’t decided yet to enlist in the Air Force.  He was a blond farm boy from Indiana.  I met him in California where he drove his truck to, broke down, and moved in with a family who took him in when he was down on his luck.  He was so charming.  It was a good thing, too, because he didn’t have a job and was basically freeloading off the family he had the fortune of living with.  I enlisted in the Air Force and he “let me go”.

I fell in love with a boy…
He was a free spirit.  We had fun no matter what we were doing.  We even got a pet rat, skied Mt Bachelor in Oregon, and made a model airplane.  In the end, we just weren’t going in the same direction.

I fell in love with a boy…
He was such a jerk.  Unfortunately, I didn’t find out about it until I married him.  He never loved me.  He used to say, “You’re pretty, but you’re not beautiful.”  He was so verbally abusive that I started to feel trapped by my own inadequacies, although they were likely manufactured by this “boy”.  A few years after I left him, I started to breathe again.

I fell in love with a boy…
He was the most beautiful person I ever laid eyes on.  I kissed him a million times.  He was a part of me in every way.  It was just the two of us for many years.  My world revolved around him.  I think so fondly of him even now, and I miss him like crazy.  He was my first experience of unconditional love.  He can drive me crazy, and he is bigger than me now, and more hairy, but I still love him.

I fell in love with a boy…
He is my best friend in the whole world.  He knows me.  He loves me anyway.  He also can drive me crazy, but we are still heading down this road together.  We are Yin and Yang, Frick and Frack, Bert and Ernie. 

I fell in love with a boy…
He is so accident prone.  He doesn’t know how to ride a bike yet.  He asks me about wind advisories and political parties.  He is so smart, but the least observant human being on the planet.  He gets to laughing so hard his eyes water and he can’t breathe and that makes me laugh. 

My life has been amazing so far, and in no small part to these boys I fell in love with.  Even the ones that broke apart for whatever reason shaped a part of who I am today and what I value.  For that, I am so thankful.

We have a new computer system at work.  It hasn’t been implemented yet, not until next month.  However, lots have already been cast, lines drawn in the sand, teams picked, war paint applied.  And you can take a guess who the project manager is for the implementation.  Yes, indeed…yours truly.

Any time I have a meeting about this system, 3 out of the 12 implementation team members attend.  I have been told I can “drink the Kool Aid” if I want to, accused of forcing a useless program down peoples’ throats, told the program is destined for failure (with even a monetary wager), and told point blank how much this program is hated by the masses.  Closed-mindedness can be so mean-spirited.  Although, I don’t take their angst personally.

Here are a few interesting factoids.  Back in Jesus’ day, the world population was about 228 million.  He began His ministry with 12 souls.  That would have been about .0000005% of the world population.  There are about 2.1 billion Jesus-believing people in the world today…about 33% of the world population, and 9 times more than the total population of the world in Jesus’ time.  But He started with 12.  Sure, Jesus’ mission and purpose is exponentially more significant than my workplace’s new computer system, but even the founder of Dell said about his efforts in his own company, “…while some resisted, many welcomed the chance to play a more prominent role in the entire process.”  The lesson I learned from this?  Don’t concern yourself with the naysayers and scrooges when you are trying to move forward with something you know will ultimately be a benefit to business and customer service.  Cleave to your compadres–those few who stand along side you and are doing their part to help things progress as they should.

Play it out in your mind.  What could happen?  Now, STOP IT!!!  Are you kidding??  Don’t play anything out in your mind!  Just press forward with your plan.  Exercise patience, humility, careful directing, and positive control. 

The Bottom Line:  If it is a venture that is truly worthwhile, people will become believers, even if they don’t start out that way.