Goofing Off is Good for You ... and Your Business

Reading  an article in Fast Company, Hard Work's Overrated- Maybe Detrimental, I found myself releasing a sigh of self acceptance. As a recovering workaholic I mostly feel like a big fat underachiever when I read biz mags. I compare myself to the 20 and 30 somethings setting the world on fire, working 100 hour weeks and living off the buzz of creating something new, plus a few gallons of  Red Bull and Starbucks each week. I remember those days and nights when I would work feverishly building new businesses to change the world. It was an  exciting time. Life was a constant high.

When I wasn't working - which  was almost never - I was working out intensely, traveling for work, reading for work or socializing with friends from work, which always  generated more exciting ideas to work on. 

After years of operating faster than the speed of light I began to experience the law of diminishing returns. Not only was I enjoying work less, but I was becoming less effective, though working more hours. So after a sabbatical of living in a small fishing village in Mexico, operating at the speed of flowers blooming, I discovered a new way to work. It includes lots of goofing off.

I am prone to return to my old habits when I'm stressed about a problem. So when I find myself in front of my laptop tapping my foot impatiently as a site loads, or checking my email incessantly, I know the "aholic" in me has taken over and it's time for a break. At that point I have stopped being effective and the more I work the less effective I will be. 

It doesn't much matter what I do to shake things up as long as I'm not working. I've found over an over again that problems sort themselves out, not when I'm trying to solve them, but when I'm riding my bike, dancing in my living room, walking by the ocean, digging in the garden or reading a book  purely for enjoyment. 

When I can slip away from that which is causing me stress and find the pleasure in goofing off, something shifts  in me. My mind wanders. I let my guard down. Creativity starts to flow. I feel more peaceful and open to opportunities. Good things seem to happen.  

Reaching new members for our business is one of the challenges I am working on all the time. If I let myself, I can get quite stressed about it. Taking a much needed break from work a few weeks ago, my husband and I enjoyed a Friday night Tantra Class .  We went just to experience the pleasure of being in each other's company in a completely focused and open-hearted way. When the class ended we spoke with a friend we hadn't seen in a while. She offered to introduce us to an estate planning firm. She did, and that introduction lead to our most recent joint venture, introducing Bcelebrated to many new members. That might never had happened if I'd stayed glued to my computer working on ways to reach a wider audience.

Is surrender an option in challenging times?

There's no doubt that we are in a time of change, and change can be challenging. Most of us fear change when we are not creating it. So really it's probably more a matter of control. When things are changing around us we feel we've lost control. And that can be very scary.

I'm someone who's really enjoyed control. When I run businesses I like making decisions and living or dying by them. I have always been comfortable with taking responsibility for my actions and decisions. I have never felt like a victim of anyone or anything. I've always felt like I was in control. That is until I wasn't...

In my mid-30s I got really sick. I'd had digestive disorders my whole life, and though I had pain every day I had it "under contro". Then at 35 everything seemed to change. My body was reacting violently to all food and drink. Then it started hurting even if I wasn't eating or drinking. I discovered I had celiac, but giving up gluten didn't help. I had a severe case of IBS , but all of the medication and alternative treatments couldn't lift me out of this cycle of pain, nausea, and fatigue. I spent all my money, time, and energy focused on overcoming this debilitating pain that had me bed-ridden for far too long. 

After suffering with this for years, after trying every medical, alternative, physical, emotional and spiritual approach I could find I finally did the only thing that was left. I surrendered. I stopped trying to control my body, control my pain, control my shame about being sick, and control other people's impression of me. And the strangest thing happened - no I wasn't miraculously cured. I would still be up at night with terrible pain. I would still have to cancel plans at the last minute because I just couldn't get out of bed. But something changed. I stopped suffering. Though my body was still wracked with pain, the suffering ended. The suffering was happening in my mind. The place where it wanted it all to be different, wanted me to be back in control. 

Once I gave up control, I started to see my body as an ally to be honored rather than an enemy to be dominated. I saw it as a teacher, a wise guru, that had been speaking the truth to me for many years - first in a whisper, then a quiet voice, growing louder all the time, until it had to shout at me non-stop for years to get my attention. This teacher had been admonishing me to slow down, feel my feelings, enjoy life, take it less seriously, play more, rest more, enjoy more, love and be loved more.

Since surrendering my life has never been better. I live much simpler and much happier. I have more time with the people I love. I have more time with myself. I could never in my 30's imagined a life as rich and pleasurable as the one I live now. But it took a catastrophic change to get me here.

Today things are changing all around us. To some it feels catastrophic. I see fear on faces and hear it in voices of people around me. They are facing a future that is unsure. They want to maintain control.  Instead of fighting what is happening, what might happen if they surrendered?

I have a friend who's been on a financial fast track for the 5 years I have known her. Amassing her wealth so she could build a healing retreat center in Costa Rica one day. She was always analyzing and planning. Then everything changed. Her real estate deals went sour, her net worth plummeted and her dreams seemed farther away than ever. Then she did something I'd never seen her do. She surrendered. She followed her heart and went down to Costa Rica. She was introduced to a woman who had set up a beautiful eco-lodge with an olympic sized pool but wanted to move back to the US. She was looking for someone to run her place. So my friend and her husband stepped in. He runs the restaurant and she offers yoga, meditation and healing practices. Her dream came to her as soon as she dropped the need to control it all.

Maybe surrender isn't the right path for you. I don't think there's only one path to happiness. But if the one you are traveling is not bringing you peace, maybe you want to take a detour for a while and try the path of surrender.

Life is just suppose to make you feel.

 "I don't believe that life is supposed to make you feel good, or make you feel miserable either. Life is just supposed to make you feel." - Gloria Naylor

As I showered yesterday I really enjoyed the feeling of the lather gliding over my body. It was a moment of simple pleasure. As I sat down to breakfast I purposely slowed myself down to really taste what I was eating. I loved hot buttery cereal warming the inside of my mouth and the way the banana melted against my palate. Feeling all of life has become important to me.

I was a pretty tough kid. My mom was shocked (perhaps horrified) that I would watch a sad made-for-tv movie without shedding a tear, while she would be a blubbering mess on the couch next to me. I'm not sure where I got the idea that expressing my feelings was a bad thing, but somewhere along the way I decided to stuff it all down. I did a good job. I kept my excitement to a minimum and few people ever knew when I was sad or hurting. Even my closest friends would tell me I was hard to get to know. I was a great listener and sympathetic friend but rarely opened up about my own feelings.

I believe this comes from a deep fear of being vulnerable. I've lived believing that life is hard. Because I've believed life is hard, I've believed I have to be tough. To be tough I've hidden anything that would make me vulnerable. Feelings are at the top of the list. 

I've spent the last decade learning how to feel my feelings. It may seem ridiculous that I have to learn what comes naturally, but this habit is so deeply ingrained in my behavior that I am often not sure what I am feeling. At 45 I am amazed and delighted to be feeling emotions that have eluded me for most of my life.

I had a new discovery just last week. I really miss my family! When I was 27 I moved thousands of miles away from home for my work. Since then I've always lived at least a 4 hour plane ride away, some times further. I've just booked a trip back to Toronto. As soon as the tickets were purchased I was overwhelmed by the feelings of missing my family. It shocked me that I should have all these feelings of sadness when I'm planning to see them in a few weeks. Then it dawned on me. I don't let myself miss my family until I know I'll be seeing them soon. It's more "manageable" to feel all my sadness and pain of separation when I know it will be only for a short time. It got me wondering... how much energy do I use pushing down these feelings of sadness? Pushing them down so deep that I am completely unaware of them most of the time.  I haven't been holding my feelings in because I am not feeling anything, but rather because I feel things so deeply I have been afraid of all that's inside me.

 I have learned over the years that when I really let myself feel something, express it and let it take me over, it quickly subsides. I feel more energetic and peaceful afterwards. It's refreshing to really feel things - even the crappy feelings - like rage, jealousy, fear. Really feeling them, embracing them and expressing them, helps me integrate them naturally as a part of who I am.

Even though I know this to be true through my own experience, I am constantly amazed to discover how often I am unconsciously using my life force to stifle my feelings; my pain, my joy, my love.  All these years I was trying to be tough, when what I really wanted to be was strong. And it takes a great deal of strength to really feel all there is inside me to feel. Strong people are willing to be vulnerable. There is a wholeness and a richness to life that can only be experienced when we are vulnerable.

Perhaps Gloria Naylor is correct, "Life is just suppose to make you feel". If that is true I have been missing the point for most of my life. But my life is not over yet, and this journey I began 10 years ago continues to lead me into exciting, painful, wonderful experiences. And I'm so thrilled to feel it all.

From losing a breast to climbing a mountain

Bcelebrated is about celebrating life and leaving a legacy. When we talk about celebrating life, we don't just mean the sugary sweet stuff that comes wrapped in a pretty package. Life is tricky, and sometimes the best gifts of all come wrapped as tragedy, disease, and hardship. If we can embrace it all there is much to be learned from the challenges life throws us. 

October is Breast Cancer Awareness month. So today we want to share Deb Hunt's inspiring story with you. It's a great example of embracing challenge and growing from it. Diagnosed with Breast Cancer in April of 2008, she endured a mastectomy, 18 weeks of chemotherapy, 5 weeks of radiation and a complete upheaval of her life. She says that all of it has made her life better. You'll discover by reading her story that Deb has a great attitude towards life, and now that attitude is going to experience some altitude - as she and 3 friends climb Mt. Kilimanjaro in Sept. 2010 to raise awareness and funds for Breakthrough Breast Cancer.  Here's her story:

My name is Deb Hunt, I live in Oxfordshire, England with my husband Martin, two teenage children and a horse sized Labradoodle dog named Bailey. It was on April 1^st 2008 that I discovered I was to become one of the 46,000 women in the UK that are diagnosed with breast cancer each year. April 1^st in the UK is known as ‘April Fools Day’, a day when jokes are played – unfortunately for me it was no laughing matter! At the age of 43; wife; mother; part-time charity worker; dog walker; taxi service etc etc, juggling life and trying to keep all the balls in the air on a daily basis, as we all do, I decided that I was not going to become a ‘victim’ and that I would tackle this challenge head on.

A mastectomy quickly followed, then 18 weeks of chemotherapy and 5 weeks of daily doses of radiotherapy, with the weekends off for good behaviour!

Black humour got us through and smiling and laughing really was the best medicine. When I went in for my surgery I hung a picture of that famous David Beckham Armani ad on the end of my bed with the strap line ‘only doctors this good looking need stop here!’ It worked like a dream, all the doctors and nurses had a smile on their face as soon as they entered the room and it immediately banished any gloom.

I can’t pretend that the chemotherapy was fun, believe me, having one tit and no hair doesn’t do a lot for a girls confidence!, but with the support of wonderful family and friends and more laughter than I have ever had in my life before we made it through. I say ‘we’ because being diagnosed with any sort of cancer doesn’t just affect the individual, it has an impact on all those around you.

So, what are my top tips for getting through the biggest challenge of your life?

Smile, smile, smile – don’t let it get you down. If you smile, those around you smile too and I believe looking at the funny side of things really works.

Write a diary (mine’s called ‘My Right Tit!’) - Write down the good things, write down the bad things, write down how you feel. When you don’t feel like smiling it’s a good way to vent your anger and frustration at the down right unjustness of the disease and why it’s chosen to inflict itself on your life.

When you go in for surgery get David Beckham (George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp – the choice is yours!) on the end of your bed, it works a treat!

After surgery aim to wear your ‘normal’ clothes as soon as possible. Girls, get your lip gloss and mascara on before the docs come round, celebrate your eyelashes – let’s face it you are gonna be without them for a while so make the most of them while you can!

Get your ‘new hair’ sorted as soon as you know you will be having chemo. Take your wig to the hairdressers; get it cut to a style that suits you. Wigs usually have about 40% too much hair in them, having it styled makes it look more realistic. I was so pleased with mine I wore it out to lunch that day and I met people during my chemotherapy that had absolutely no idea what I was going through – that was a massive morale boost. Having a good wig (or several if you prefer) also gave me the pleasure (?) of shaving my hair off as soon as it started to fall out. I was in control of it, not the chemo and I didn’t even cry until I saw it disappearing up the vacuum nozzle!

Acupuncture helped me too. I had a weekly session and it really helped control fatigue and also kept my blood counts high, preventing any delays in the chemo cycles.

Plan Something. If your chemo is on a 3 week cycle by the third week you usually feel reasonably good. Plan something for each of those weeks. Get out to lunch with your girl friends, do something fun, do something ‘normal’.

If it’s possible carry on working. I was lucky in that I had an office based job. I had one week off after each chemo cycle and then went back to work for two weeks before starting the process again. It keeps a sense of normality in your life and certainly makes the weeks go by faster.

Welcome all the treatment they throw at you. Accept the chemo as a friend not an enemy. The side effects may not be pleasant but at least you know it’s doing something!

Eat chocolate, drink wine, read magazines, laugh with friends, make the most of life and don’t let the shear damned inconvenience of having breast cancer change the person you are.

So, there you go. Deb Hunt’s  top tips for getting through all the bullshit!

I finished radiotherapy last November and looking back the whole experience now seems to be a bit surreal. As I left the hospital for the last time I suddenly felt as if I had fallen into a vast void. What now? No more routine visits, no more doctors feeling your boobs (oops, sorry I meant boob!), no more monitoring your every move. I needed something to focus on and in a moment of madness decided that I would do something that I would never have considered doing before; a skydive!

Five months later I threw myself out of a plane (strapped to a good looking instructor of course!) and raised £2500 for Breakthrough Breast Cancer, one of the UK’s top Breast Cancer charities. It was an amazing experience and made me realise that anything was achievable. I have never felt more alive than during those free-falling seconds before the parachute went up and by the time I had landed on the ground I was a different woman.

The old cliché that ‘life is for living’ is so true. Cancer is a wake up call. With the great research that is taking place, around breast cancer in particular, more women are surviving the disease but having gone through it puts a new perspective on your life. Before Breast Cancer I was drifting. It has given me a new focus and I am now determined to help in the fight against the disease in the hope that none of my family or friends have to go through what I have been through. Great research doesn’t come without a cost so following the skydive, and a few too many glasses of wine, myself and three great friends decided that we would do something ‘big’ to raise a few more pennies for the cause.

It was a pretty fateful evening that night in the pub, because by the end of it we had decided that we were all up for a massive challenge, something that was way out of our comfort zone, something that would mean that we would have to train hard to be fit to do it and something that would be impressive enough to enable us to raise the target we had set ourselves of £20,000. That challenge is the Kilimanjaro Summit Trek in September 2010! At 5,892metres Kilimanjaro is the highest point in the African continent and the tallest free standing mountain in the world. Now if I could just put things into context, all four of us get out of breath running up the stairs, so you can see we have quite a way to go before we tackle the summit!

This adventure has already completely changed my daily life. We all decided that we would fund the trip ourselves so that all the money raised would go to the charity (Breakthrough Breast Cancer) and have tried to approach the challenge in as business-as-like fashion as possible. This challenge is also a journey of self development, something that we didn’t anticipate. We have found ourselves giving press and radio interviews, meeting with business executives, learning marketing and PR tricks, all skills that will no doubt help us in the future. It’s also amazingly good fun thinking up different fundraising ideas and innovative ways to get people to part with their money – charities in particular are finding it hard in the present economic climate.

So you see, there is life after Breast Cancer. If I’m being totally honest I think it’s fair to say that there is a better life after Breast Cancer. I enjoy and appreciate my friends and family much more than I did before (and that was quite a lot!); I see the funny side and the positive in everything; I don’t take things for granted, like the beautiful countryside that I live in or a clear blue sky. All these things have new meaning when you become a ‘survivor’. At the end of the day, none of us know how long the Earth will be graced with our unique presence so let’s make the most of it while we can and make a difference whilst we’re here.

To support Deb's mission join Bcelebrated and enter the code ALTITUDE. You'll save 20% off your membership and we'll donate $20.00 to her fund.

To learn more about Deb and her trek to Kilimanjaro go to her site at: www.twin-peaks.co.uk