I hope you enjoyed your time away over the Thanksgiving holiday!
Please enjoy this rerun from a couple of years ago when I intended to take a vacation, but instead worked the entire time. Maybe some of you can relate…
If there is one thing I am known for as an executive coach, it is ensuring my clients hear this clear message: when you are on vacation, you are resting.
There has been a lot of work done to show that we are actually able to perform better when we are practicing good self-care. Part of good self-care is that we learn how to rest.
I really love how Parker Palmer puts it, “Self-care is never a selfish act - it is simply good stewardship of the only gift I have, the gift I was put on earth to offer others. Anytime we can listen to true self and give it the care it requires, we do it not only for ourselves but for the many others whose lives we touch.”
OUCH. That one hurts me personally. So much so that I think I need to apologize to all of you who trust me as a coach and in the work of developing the leaders in your organization.
Why?
Because I just had a “vacation” and instead of resting, I worked.
Usually, when I am on vacation I will catch up on a lot of reading, reflecting, and journaling. Mostly how I rest is that I will have fun with my wife and my friends and family, we play golf, go out for dinner, and play games.
This last vacation I took, I did the second thing; spent time with friends and family playing golf and board games.
What I did not do was spend any time reflecting or reading or journaling.
Instead, I had client calls, and planning meetings, and workshop preparation.
DANG! Why did I do that?
In his book Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, Peter Scazzero calls this out as the importance of silence and solitude. He found in his own leadership journey how important this was, not only when taking chunks of time out, like a vacation, but integrating silence and solitude as part of his daily routine. Scazzero writes that he slowed the pace of his life down from working six days a week (about 70 hours) to five days and 40 hours. Over the years, this slowing down has given him time for solitude and reflection.
The counter-intuitive aspect of this is not always obvious - that this slowing down is actually something that can help us go faster. It can clear our minds. It can refresh us.
The parallel for me is sleep. When I get a good night’s sleep of 8 hours, I am ready to take on my day. If for some reason I only sleep 4 hours, I am groggy and sluggish the rest of the day.
While that is an example of a 24-hour cycle; when we put our weeks and months together the logic is the same.
Rest And Emotional Regulation
By now most of you know the story of the part of our brain called the amygdala. It is the sight of emotional learning and emotional memory. It is the part of the brain’s fear circuit and can trigger things like anger and aggression. When you do not rest enough, or well, this part of your brain doesn’t get the reset it needs from all the day’s activity.
Research has shown that sleep-deprived people show a 60 percent greater activation of the amygdala during waking hours than those who are not sleep-deprived. In his book, Successful Aging, Daniel Levitin writes that “when your mom told you that you were crabby when you didn’t get enough sleep, she was probably right.” (As a side note, Levitin states that sleep deprivation is strongly associated with Alzheimer’s disease.)
The same kind of rest we need every night is needed in more of a yearly pattern as well. As leaders, we need to be able to disengage, to be silent, to think, to become distracted. There is energy in this when we reengage. It is like waking up from a good night’s rest and having your Mom say, “Wow! Look at you! You sure on in a good mood. You must have had a good night’s sleep!”
Remedy
Edgar Schein, in his book Humble Inqury, makes a most salient point in this area when it comes to the real problem. All of this busyness affects our ability to regulate emotion and gets us into a state of mindless hurrying. Schein writes, “If I hurry I do not pay enough attention to what is going on, and that makes mistakes more likely.”
DANG!
Why didn’t I just take my vacation and disengage so I could be in a frame to reduce mistakes? It all seems so simple.
More importantly, perhaps, then not paying attention is that I may miss new opportunities that are right in front of me. Because I am not rested, I mindlessly hurry by them.
For me, I agree with Schein in that learning how to run faster is not where I need to be in my life, but that I need to slow down in order to make sure I have my full thinking and observational mind available to me and can take “full stock of reality.”
My next vacation is scheduled over the Christmas holiday. Please know I will not be available. But also know that when I come back in January, you will get a better version of me.