Liberating Your Emotional Real Estate

I recently read a blog post with a headline that read, Love Your 4 Day Vacation? Does that mean you DON’T love your job? The blog post was a good one that ended up being about flexible work schedules, of which I’m a huge fan but it didn’t address what I THOUGHT it would.  I thought it would be about how taking time off gives you a renewed outlook on your jobs, your projects, your life.  Isn’t that what vacation is for?

Everyone needs some time of “forced” vacation.  My hairdresser shared with me today that she spent the weekend doing some “serious soul searching” and ended up deciding to jump in and lease that new 1800 s/f space she’d been looking at and bring on up to 5 hairdressers to lease space from her – a huge shift from her one-woman, independent shop.  She confessed that, in part, the reason she was able to make the time and space necessary to make this decision was because “nothing was open”.

We are not a society of limited choices, of this I’m certain.  There are always things to do, places to go, money to burn.  Don’t get me wrong, I like doing all of these things as much as the next person and I’m grateful for the choices and freedoms we enjoy.  But sometimes, just sometimes, could we take some time to be alone and do some soul-searching and, at the risk of sounding new-age-ish, self-reflection?

When I entered the Peace Corps at the age of 22 and was placed in my site, I was a complete wreck.  Was it because I missed home?  Was it because I was overwhelmed with saving the world?  Was it because I didn’t have running water every day?  Was it because a huge rat lived in my kitchen sink?  Nope.  It was because, for what felt like the first time in my entire life, I was forced to spend time with myself.  A lot of time.  No TV, no radio, not much of a job to do.  No real friends to speak of.  No public library.  It was sheer hell.  But it was during that time that I learned more about myself than I had before or since that experience…no distractions, just me.  Go figure.

Every time I’ve created the space to think about a project at hand, a direction I’m considering, a new strategic partnership, amazing things happen.  One of my best ideas for a partnership project came from a long run where I made the space to just focus on tossing ideas around.  I made the decision to leave a beloved job after the birth of my first daughter on a beach in Hawaii.  Clarity seems to come more easily when you give it the space to exist.

And here’s the kicker.  If you don’t create space for your ideas, decisions and direction to exist but they’re still somewhere on your radar…guess what?  These things will take up precious emotional real estate.  On some level, you ARE thinking about many of these things all the time.  But by not giving them the space they deserve, all of these things begin to creep into places they shouldn’t – distracting you when you should be focused.  We’re so busy being busy on a daily basis (and yes, I’m guilty of this too) that we don’t realize that by NOT slowing down, by NOT taking the time we need to create space for reflection about these things, we’re actually shooting ourselves and our own progress right in the foot.  While the voice of these thoughts may start out as a whisper, they eventually grow into a roar if we choose not to listen.

A great quote by Andrew Jackson advises, “Always take all the time to reflect that circumstances permit, but when the time for action has come, stop thinking.”  Until we leave space for that reflection, it’s impossible to stop thinking.

For the sake of your sanity and your productivity, find a time to create that space for that thing you KNOW you need to address.  Take a few minutes each day and pick one thing on which to focus.  Or take a few hours each week.  While it may seem counterintuitive at first, when you do this regularly, the jump in your clarity and productivity will astound you.