Are You Working Too Hard?

The purpose of this question is to cause us to focus on why and how we do things. Most of my life I've performed to get others to accept and like me, as well as to achieve my goals. I said I didn't care if they liked me but deep down I did. So, I endeavored to be the best at my work, tried to make others feel comfortable, tried to please my wife and friends and on and on.

I've always been goal-oriented. When I have a purpose before me, I usually spend 110% of my energy and time working towards an accomplishment. In fact, I usually work until I wear out!

This behavior fits with my upbringing, which could be defined as performance orientation. This has always been my subconscious reasoning: the harder I work, the greater the rewards or maybe the more others will like and respect me. It is true that hard work has its rewards but, for some of us, our thinking is rooted in "good boy, bad boy" (or girl) heart motives. When the reasons for performance moves from accomplishing an objective to satisfying dysfunctional needs, we push ourselves to the end of our strengths.

I've been blessed with some new and different work lately. Because I always want to do a good job, I've been working extra hard and long to do the new projects correctly. Planning to work this weekend, I awoke exhausted this morning. A different kind of wake-up call, this usually tells me I'm relying too much on my own strength to meet real or self-imposed deadlines and that I NEED REST!

I forget that when I have adequate rest, I am stronger both physically and mentally. God rested on the seventh day; we need to rest! We can usually accomplish more in less time than when we keep continually pushing ourselves towards a goal. When we slow down or stop for a day or so, we can recharge. Taking our focus off our work enables us to see more clearly how to get where we're going and what we need to change to get there.

Remember the old song? It was by Carly Simon I think:

"I can see clearly now, the rain is gone.
I can see all the obstacles in my way.
All the darkened clouds of gloom are gone.
It's gonna be a bright, bright sunshiny day!"