The Challenge? Do Less.

Too often, I find myself in the midst of a crazed schedule that has me mapping out every waking hour of the day. I hate these periods. I don't quite know how I end up in them but I'm in another one and it's screwing up my sleep, my health, and my attitude.

Clients. Health care appointments. An AMTA event for massage therapy awareness week. And I'm leaving Friday morning to watch my niece compete in the national junior rodeo in Waco.

How busy is this week? I'm still trying to figure out when I have 45 minutes to pack for the weekend. I may have to do that tonight because I don't see any other open spaces on my calendar before my flight leaves Friday morning!

It's an ongoing challenge for me, this over-scheduling. I see a blank space on my calendar and say "yes, I can put xyz in that slot. It's empty after all."

I have a chalkboard in my bedroom and I write inspirational phrases on it. These phrases are meant to be good for months or the year. Two weeks ago I wrote "Do Less".

Does that phrase panic you? Are you convinced you will go out of business / starve / live out of a shopping cart / sleep till 2015 / lose all your friends / go bankrupt / die? If the phrase causes panic, then the odds are you are fearing one of these things or something like it.

I've learned over the years that when I Do Less, I do better -- better work, better sleep, better finances, better friendships. Our lives, like our tissue, needs space. Sweet empty space. Sometimes I'm better at allowing that sweet empty space to occur than others. This, clearly, isn't one of those times.

I could give you a lot of reasons -- a (finally) blossoming private practice, building a new training company, some confounding health issues that require me to experiment with treatment options, a desperate need to have a social life every now and then, a desperate need to spend some time with my husband, a genuine love of travel, the deadline for a seminar I'm teaching in (gulp) in 2 weeks. Those are all good reasons, right? Right?

Doesn't matter. I'm only one middle-aged (tired) woman. In 2008 I wrote on this experience for my client newsletter:

I've realized that as a middle-aged woman I honestly and simply can't do as much as I used to. I can’t multi-task like I used to. I can no longer be hyper-functional. 

What?! A grown woman refusing to be hyper-functional?!? I mean, hyper-functioning middle aged women are, I think, what really holds our society together sometimes. Won't that crash our economy faster than the sub-prime mortgage crisis?  

Well, perhaps we should find out. I realized that since I was 18, I've been living the life of two full-time women. It’s time to cut back to just living the life and doing the work of one full-time woman. How do I do that?  

I miss deadlines. I don't step up. I don't sign up. I don’t join in. I don't come through in a pinch. I don't go above and beyond. I don't take one for the team. I do respect the 24 hour day and 8 hours of sleep. I don't rise to the challenge. I don't make it happen. I don’t excel. I don’t push through. I do what I can and then I stop. I don’t volunteer to be a savior. I accept being in the middle of the pack, not at the head of it. 

I disappoint people.

That sounds pretty good, huh? Yet here I am again 5 years later. Obviously, this is going to be a life-long challenge. Running my own business makes it even harder. I can't assume someone else is going to pick up the slack if I don't get something done. There is no one else.

We all know the effects of running too hard. We see it on our tables every day. It can kill us, it simply can.

So I have to decide to Do Less. I have to write it on a big chalkboard that I see every morning because it's darned difficult for me!

How do I do less? Spread out some of those medical appointments. Don't take on a new class (or maybe a new client). Don't volunteer so much, even for something truly awesome. Say no, no matter how painful. It's difficult to do this. It requires trust that everything will turn out OK anyways. Trust is a scary word.

But if our clients are going to thrive, if we are going to thrive, the answer is often to do less, not more. I don't know what your sane limit is but I hope you know it (or would at least recognize it in a police line-up) and have a decent working relationship with it. Like most important relationships, you and I will probably be working on it our whole lives.

Busted! (by my own client, no less!)

Is there anyone out there who hasn't had a client ask "and when does the massage therapist get a massage?", usually with a twinkle in their eye? And you don't have a good answer? It's sooooooo embarrassing when our clients catch us out like that.

I have a client who has been seeing me weekly 5 or 6 years. As you can imagine, we've gotten to know each other pretty well. She knew I was having some frustration with a professional relationship, that I wanted to end it but was dragging my feet about it.

She proceeded to lecture me about setting professional boundaries, taking care of myself, having faith in my practice, and making sensible business decisions. All of which she's learned from......reading this blog. Yes, she quoted my own [blankety blank] blog back to me!

Damn.

So (sigh) in the last week I've given notice and the relationship will be ending in a timely manner in a professional manner. I don't know whether to be proud of her or embarrassed at myself!