Is my story your story,
Too?
Like many working women,
I had too many obligations—managing my children,
Job,
Home,
Relationship with
friends and relatives—and those last-minute surprises working mothers get when they go
about living.
It wasn't unusual to run out at 9 p.
M.
To pick up a forgotten poster board for a homework
project due the next morning,
Be flooded by 300-plus emails when returning from a vacation,
Or handle clients on a Saturday night,
Just when I was about to enter the theater.
I'll never forget the day I learned my babysitter was stealing from me,
And she didn't show
up for work on a day I had to be in the office.
Or the day my children didn't want to stay with the babysitter because they missed me.
These were just some of the things I was expected to deal with,
And I blamed other
people for imposing on me and my time.
But I was dangerously close to burnout and didn't know it.
Some days I was too busy to notice I was beyond fatigued.
I didn't even have the strength to open the mail at the end of the day.
How about the late fees I paid?
My strategy was to plan my Saturday naps and push through it.
My Mondays were more like a TGIM,
Thank God it's Monday,
Because I worked more on the
weekends than on the weekdays,
And if I wasn't working,
I was thinking about work.
I was a professional thinker and doer who thought all day long about everything I needed
to get done.
I was dedicated to my job and my family.
If I didn't do those things,
I was bored and felt that something was missing.
Although life seemed to be progressing and I achieved some things,
Those achievements
didn't give me fulfillment.
Can you relate?
I actually used to believe that life was simply one exhausting day after another,
And I know
I'm not alone in that belief.
Exhaustion can become a habit and grow into full-fledged burnout.
Most people blame it on stress.
Stress has become such a constant in our lives that it's like sleeping with a light you cannot
turn off.
You try and turn it off,
But you can't.
After a while,
You learn to sleep with the light on.
Then one night,
The light goes out.
You actually relax,
But by then you realize you can no longer sleep in the dark.
You aren't comfortable without your stress because,
Like learning to sleep with the light
on,
You've learned to be accustomed to stress.
It seems absurd,
But that is what happens.
When we are constantly exhausted,
We become comfortable with energy depletion.
We just don't remember the old easy ways of living before constant communication,
Deadlines,
Endless to-do lists,
Etc.
We forget how to relax.
How do we lose a sense of life direction by working too much?
When did we begin to work against the natural flow and without support?
When did we stop living the vision for our lives and become accustomed to just staying
afloat?
These are some of the questions I needed to ask myself,
And those answers have resulted
in this book.
Your life can change.
You don't have to stay on that hamster wheel of exhaustion and stress.
What you are about to learn is that the universe is set up to help you at the right time.
You may not believe it yet,
But I have been proven right over and over.
I call those unexpected rescues life jackets.
That's because we don't believe we need them,
But when we do,
They save us from harm.
I got my first life jacket when I was 36 years old and got laid off from my dream job.
Yes,
Being laid off can be a blessing.
I had set my eyes on that job for five years before I got it.
I made good money,
Had a great team,
And my unit was at the top of the division,
But I
was miserable.
I resented the time away from my children,
And when I had the time to be with them,
I
was too exhausted to enjoy it.
I was the mother who showed up in high heels to the hiking field trip because I didn't
have time to read the school's note fully.
I was the mother who arrived at school events at the last minute and was the first to leave.
I was the mother who signed up to chaperone for school trips early in the school year
so I wouldn't feel guilty when my children compared me to their friends' mothers who
seemed to show up to school every other day.
Though I was successful,
I felt like I was going to have a heart attack from the pressure
I was under.
Then,
The job ended,
And I was suddenly free to do something else.
It gave me a little breathing room to reflect,
But it didn't stop my tendency to overthink,
Overdo,
And push through.
My second life jacket came a few years later when I began practicing meditation,
Though
inconsistently.
Until that time,
I continued to be the woman who did budgets after 6pm,
Worked longer hours
on home office days,
Showed up on snow days,
Enrolled in an MBA program,
And did homework
at lunch breaks and after the children went to bed.
I handled every event like an emergency,
Even setting up a crisis conference call on Christmas
Day,
When it could have waited until December 26th.
I made blunders such as losing the car keys on important meeting days,
Forgetting my business
card at trade shows,
Scheduling the wrong dates for the annual company conference,
And
missing the flight home when I was at the airport 3 hours prior to the flight's departure.
Yes,
I missed the flight because I was not paying attention to my environment,
But when
I meditated for 3 or 4 days,
I was able to step outside my busy life and see the aspects
that needed to be changed.
My third life jacket came when I was writing this book.
The funny thing about writing about your experiences is that you get to relive them.
In my journey of sharing with the world what I had learned,
The universe had one more lesson
to teach me.
That's when change truly chose me.
When change chooses you,
And you surrender,
Wonderful things happen.
Transformation that begins with pain becomes bliss.
I learned on my journey to wellness that I was missing one big element,
Healing.
How do we heal from burnout?
How do we stop depleting our body,
Mind,
And spirit?
How do we end the stress habit?
Here's what I learned.
Self-trust is the cure for burnout.
You read that right.
If you're expecting the scientific proof or any lab experiment,
However,
You will be disappointed.
But in my experience,
Trusting in ourselves is the transformative element that makes us
whole.
It may seem that people like us who overachieve,
Overdo,
Overwork,
Overpromise,
And overdeliver
don't have a problem trusting ourselves,
But we do.
This book is designed to help you reflect with a still mind and gain the clarity you
need to begin your journey to trusting and healing.
