Work Hard, Rest Harder

(gentle music) Headspace Studio. (upbeat music) Hi, this is Kessonga, and I welcome you this Friday to Radio Headspace. So first I want to take a mindful moment to wish a special person in my life a very happy birthday. It's me. Happy birthday to me. Today is indeed my birthday. And so I was thinking about the special days of the year and how I have a cousin in real estate who posts about how each day has some special relevance. So for instance, there's a national cupcake day, and one of my favorites, a national meditation day. And so one of these national days that caught my attention is National Workaholics Day. This year, it actually fell on July 5th. This national day is meant to remind everyone to find more harmony between their work and their home life. So I actually asked myself, hmm, am I a workaholic? And then I asked, do I allow myself to take purposeful extended pauses from work, IE, a vacation? And then I thought about the importance of taking one. So growing up, one of the mantras that was instilled in me is work hard, play hard, but you have to work hard first. And so I just always developed a work ethic where I kind of just grinded it out. This was through high school, college, and grad school, both times. But I feel like I was able to also harmonize it with having fun too. These days I have live-in work play monitors in the form of my lovely daughters and wife. So let me explain. Last month we decided to take a beach vacation to the outer banks of North Carolina. Beautiful beaches there. In my mind, it was going to be a work vacay. I had a presentation to do online and I had a lot of writing to do, but I told myself I would also enjoy some beach downtime. The work play harmonizing, right? Well apparently I got it wrong because on the third night, my ladies very mindfully told me that I was working too much and not making the vacation feel like a vacation. I found this so interesting. But this is what we often do, right? In today's society where everything is go, go, go, more, more, more, and now, now, now, do we actually allow ourselves to just pause and stop and take in what's really important? And so in this instance, not that my work wasn't important, but was it more important than missing those precious moments with my family? Absolutely not. And guess what? I actually did listen to them and I put my work aside and devoted my full attention to them, and it was magnificent. Not only did I enjoy my time with my family, but I allowed my mind and my total being to just kind of decompress. Because I love my work so much to the point where it really doesn't even feel like work....