The Benefits of Lowering Your Standards!
Protestant Work Ethic!
That’s my careers guidance UK opening gambit today. I’m talking here about the mayhem a work-ethic can cause us when it runs riot through our everyday lives. I found these words in The Independent
“I think 2008 made some differences. People who had followed the work ethic for years found themselves without a job; all the sacrifices – working long hours, not seeing the kids – had not worked out. We may find that’s damaged the work ethic and people are putting less focus on work and more on a balance between work and the rest of their life.”
A damaged work ethic? What about the damage it has done to people???? Whilst the health-giving benefits engaging with work are well documented, what happened to the healthy work life/balance….? I don’t know if this applies to you, but, as the late summer bank holiday draws to a close, I’m feeling done-in.
Much as I love my children, what, at the beginning of the school holidays appeared to be a whole oasis of none school-regulated weeks, has begun to wear thin. How frustrating is it trying to do the double shift of work and parent? How flipping difficult is it to string a coherent thought, email, document or strategy together with one hand, whilst pacifying a six-year-old with the other? How guilt inducing is it to plug your child into Minecraft (on a sunny day!), whilst you reorder your brain and inbox?
“How guilt-inducing is it to plug your child into Minecraft”
If you are pulled between the TA drivers of ‘Be Perfect” and ‘Hurry Up‘, then you will have had 6 weeks of burning the candle at both ends… If you are anything like me, you might be feeling like you’re a little bit overwhelmed right now!That is because it is not possible to give, all the time, in every facet without becoming undernourished. Undernourishment will lead to over-commitment and under achieving (according to our own standards!) and thus begins the spiral into despair…
Whenever I do this I have to say that my husband stares at me bemused saying things like ‘ but you are more successful than you have ever been in your life!’. That doesn’t help. Or ‘slow down, you’re doing really well’. Much as I adore the man, That doesn’t help at all either, because I don’t feel it. I can’t hear it and don’t feel it because I am acutely undernourished!
I feel like a disaster, a failure. I feel like I’m about to drop all the balls and the sky will fall in. I feel Iike I have been a crap mother, a crap professional, an absent friend, and now, to top it all, I am a wailing wife…..!
What I do have to do is lower my standards. I need to have a little faith. I need to realise that if a new client and I are supposed to be working together, then we will. Even if I do need to wait 24 hours before responding to an inquiry. I need to realise that my son does need downtime & not to be harangued into being enthusiastic about new things 24/7. I need to breathe and trust that it’s ok if the garden gets a little out of control or my friends don’t see me for weeks on end… My Friends have lasted this long: My friends care for me, and they too have their own vacation-challenges. It’s not all about me. My husband is used to his periodically railing wife. He also knows that I’ll resolve it (in the end).
Careers Guidance UK: Lower your standards!
What I need instead is to retreat and restore. I need to do as The Druids did and ‘be’ in nature. I need to carve out time and space and do nourishing things for myself. I need to invite in the Three Restorers: Roseroot for immunity, sensuality and brain food, St Johns wort to raise my spirits, Valerian for sleep and reduced anxiety. I need to rejuvenate.
“ Do as nature does and all shall be well.”
My careers guidance right now is to do as little towards your career as possible: My guidance is to fend off the demands, and, to ask for help where they persist. To have peaceful times (3 minutes is better than nowt). To be more kind to ourselves. To revel in the sun and know that if we have a “Fxxk It”, or a playful day. Few will judge us for taking this action as our energy levels will rise in order that we can take on the work another day. In fact, few are judging us, as harshly as well do ourselves, at all!
Begone you work ethic, just for now: Trust your harvest is maturing as you read this. Between Lammas and Mabon it is good spiritual practice to kick back and reap what you have sown earlier in the year. Put that in your work-ethic pipe and smoke it! Do as nature does and all shall be well.