|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
by Lisa Rickwood
“On the keyboard of life, always have one finger on the escape key.”
- Anonymous
It’s a miserable, cold Tuesday morning and you’ve slept through your alarm again. You race through the first part of your morning then hit the highway like an Indy 500 racecar driver. Your heart pounds, road rage builds and you fantasize about ditching work, returning to bed, and pulling that cozy duvet high over your head. Instead, you go to work, with the full knowledge that overwhelming tasks will undoubtedly inundate you. It’s precisely at that moment you dream of cloning yourself like Michael Keaton did in the movie, Multiplicity.
The film focuses on a time-stressed man who can’t keep up with work and home demands, so he enlists the help of scientists and produces a clone of himself so he can be in two places at once. Everything appears fine until he realizes the copy has duplicated itself to achieve more. To make matters worse, the third version is less effective, like a photocopy of a photocopy.
Who hasn’t dreamt of having an identical twin slide into their life for a day or two? As the world spins faster and faster, the hours in the day seem to shrink. In the early 1980s, a US physician called the phenomena time sickness and used it to describe the belief time is getting away and we don’t have enough of it, and one must move faster to catch up. This preoccupation with time didn’t happen overnight; it commenced with the advent of the calendar. Ancient nomadic civilizations used a calendar to determine when to plant and harvest crops, and when to relocate their villages. The ability to measure time was important for the survival of these cultures.
Once we discovered how to measure years, months, weeks and days, we were free to slice time into smaller increments such as: hours, minutes and seconds. This measurement of time became important after the Industrial Revolution. The factories that popped up across North America used to monitor an employee’s productivity, loyalty and work ethic. It wasn’t uncommon for workers to spend more than 12 hours a day in factories. Now fast forward to the 21st century to where companies sink or float based on the clock.
Couriers would never survive if time wasn’t a key to the success of their business. Imagine what would happen if they told a major client his important documents for a proposed business deal would arrive sometime in the near future.
Consider companies and corporations that push their products into the market before their competitors? Would they survive if they had a laissez-faire attitude?
People believe our need for speed is a 21st century invention. It’s not. Our lives move quickly due to centuries of time focus and a large dash of new technology. Mix these ingredients together and you’ve got a recipe for disaster.
Since technology is fast, we pressure ourselves. Communication is immediate, so we must be too. It’s not acceptable to return a phone call a few hours later; we must phone back within the hour. We can’t take our vacation and leave our computers at home; we must keep wired so we don’t lose that unpredictable client. To catch-up, we stay up late, work overtime, eliminate exercise and skip meals. Our health suffers and our mental state isn’t much better. Resentment, road rage and lack of patience for others become our mainstay.
If you think you don’t suffer from stress or time constraints, consider how many times you’ve misplaced your keys, blatantly driven five blocks without remembering if you traveled through a red light, or placed your coffee cup on your car’s roof before driving to work. We’re all guilty, and it stems from sleep deprivation, stress and multi-tasking throughout our days. We’re not living in the moment because we’re thinking about the next great thing we must accomplish.
I know about stress and the need for speed because I’m a recovering “speedaholic.” Years ago, I worked as an advertising consultant for a daily newspaper and was proud of the speed at which I conducted my life. I walked, talked and drove fast. Ironically, I only received one speeding ticket and that was while keeping pace with traffic.
Another time, I was late for work and placed my purse on top of my vehicle so I could load supplies into my car. In my haste to race to the office, I drove away with the purse on the roof. I received a phone call from a woman who found my purse on a busy road.
I really became an expert on stress when my husband and I bought a 42-year-old high-end men’s wear store during a recession in a dead downtown. Three months into our business, we hired a wonderful man. He was a kind and jovial individual who moved from the mainland to Vancouver Island for a relaxed lifestyle. My life irrevocably changed on our employee’s fourth day of work in our store. I was rearranging a display when the sickening sound of a heavy weight hitting the floor chased the silence from the room. I turned my head and felt air leave my lungs. Our fun-loving colleague was lying on the floor, and he desperately needed medical intervention. Intense panic gripped me, but I pushed the fear deep into my gut, phoned 911 and performed CPR. His life was in my hands. Moments passed before an ambulance attendant whisked him away.
Hours later, police informed us he died. He had suffered a massive heart attack and nothing would have saved him. A heavy, sad feeling entered my body and I felt invisible walls closing in on me. I felt I should have been able to save him; it took a long time for this feeling to leave me.
For the next few months, I worked six days a week, managed a household and two young children. During this time, I caught colds and the flu and suffered from strange crippling viruses that attacked my muscles and cartilage on my ribcage. I grew despondent and desperate. Something had to change or I’d suffer a breakdown or die. I didn’t have the luxury of quitting my career and scaling back, so I decided to change my attitude about stress. I read every self-help and health book on the market and added exercise, nutritious food and more sleep to my life. Months later, my depression lifted, and I felt happy, healthy and energized. Best of all, I discovered a wonderful antidote for speed, slowing down and escaping the pace.
Life doesn’t need to be this way. You can escape every day and take a mini holiday amidst the chaos of your life.
If slowing down and relaxing seems ludicrous, remember that everything in nature needs downtime to rest and rejuvenate. Why should humans be any different?
I have a beautiful peach tree that grows near the back window of my house. In the first week of August, the tree’s branches are laden with plump and juicy, yellow and pink fruit that’s warm to the touch. This tree doesn’t always yield abundant fruit; every second year, it reduces its yield. Like breaks in the rhythm of music, or the poignant lull in conversation, and like this tree we need to pause throughout our day to rest and recharge ourselves.
Our greatest innovations and discoveries are made when people slow down and temporarily pause in life. Now imagine how different our lives would be if Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Edison or Albert Einstein had found themselves too busy and too stressed to record their magnificent findings.
Decades ago, peace activist Mahatma Gandhi said, “There is more to life than increasing its speed.”
When you take 15 minutes to rest, sleep, walk or just be, you deal more effectively with stress and challenges. If you approach each moment from a calm state, issues resolve more easily and your life feels serene.
Escaping the pace is about putting your needs first and being sure to take a mini holiday every day. When you practise this philosophy for 30 days, you’ll automatically make time for mini retreats.
The definition of a quick retreat is doing anything you enjoy that takes less than 30 minutes. Of course you can have longer retreats that take an hour or a day, but this may be difficult if you lead a busy life. Even in the busiest life, there are small hidden pockets of free time. This time can be used to practise your escapes which may include: reading, walking, exercising, snoozing and dancing - whatever makes you slow down, relax, live in the moment and feel refreshed.
For example, how much time do you waste waiting at the doctor’s office? There you might try reading a novel or doing a crossword puzzle. And you might try breathing deeply and meditating, or listening to your CDs.
Speed isn’t the enemy; it is knowing when one must slow down to put balance in one’s life. Some things shouldn’t be slow, like the internet and slow drivers in the fast lane. Balance is about knowing when to travel 110 km/h and when to drive off the freeway for a mini holiday. If you practise this philosophy every day, you’ll never need an identical twin.
Lisa Rickwood is author of: Escape the Pace: 100 Fun and Easy Ways to Slow Down and Enjoy Your Life. She resides on Vancouver Island with her family. 250-753-4100 info@escapethepace.com
www.escapethepace.com |
|
|
|
|
|
