Pause and Breathe

I was running incessantly not realizing the huffing, puffing and the heaviness in my stride brought on by the enervation of excess effort – fortunately before I could stumble or as they call in the business world ‘burn-out’, like always there was sent a message this time suggesting to take things easy.

As the schedule was overloaded with multiple tasks without an explicit affirmation I jumped head-on to take each task by the horn, deriving some warped delight out of ‘killing’ one chore after another everyday, sans the dawning of the fact that the joy and the experience of the completion of each activity had evaporated because of the overwhelming heat my excessive efforts generated.

The domino effect of the exhaustion from other activities was an unknowing increase in my physical activity routine in spite of my body urging me to do the contrary. As I entered the yoga studio expecting another hour of ‘required’ challenging efforts, my instructor told everyone to lie back and stretch the stress in our muscles out. It was an hour of rich discussion on the truth in the clichéd ‘are you too busy to stop and smell the flowers?’ Each word spelled out exactly what I was supposed to hear and at the end of it, it occurred to me that I might have filled up my score-sheet with quantity but sadly it had sponged out all the quality that I so cherished.

This brings us to the question demanding the reflection from all of us irrespective of the nature of our business, how much is actually too much – do we need a stroke, ulcers, stagnation of thoughts or even illogical mood swings to realize that we have come too far? Do we in every pose of physical challenge need to be told by our coach to not hold our breath?

Without an iota of doubt multi-tasking is a great and revered ability, but when we draw our inventory of items to be ticked off in the multiplicity of tasks does it also include taking ‘time-out’ to re-charge, re-fuel or simply do things that complete us.

A very popular book, with a semi-cheesy title in my opinion, ‘Seven Habits of Highly Effective People’, by Stephen Covey delineates the difference between urgent and important. He wisely advices that we slot tasks into a two by two gird with high and low levels of urgency and importance and sequence the execution so that tasks high on urgency and high on importance get executed first and so on. But the sequence and timing of tasks has an effect on us that is far beyond the accomplishment of completion – what we do at which hour of the day has visible effects on our whole being. I might need to start my day with deep meditation; he might require to rejuvenate by a long jog, while you might need to be at your desk to produce your best results. We need to delve into ourselves to sequence the activities with the sole aim of absorbing the positive outcomes of each activity and flush out the negatives.

This whole reflection would probably be incomplete without a predictable emphasis on the necessity of rest. Akin to the deep stretches after a long spin class lubricating every single muscle, the scrumptious dessert after a long meal providing gastronomical pleasure, reading a good book that is not prescribed but produces an ‘aha effect’ by matching the wavelength of your thoughts or writing your thoughts out even in the absence of an overt aim or audience giving an outlet to your implicit understandings, stopping to catch your breath is a mandatory step to reach the finish line.