An Oasis in Time: How a Day of Rest Can Save Your Life - Hardcover

Paul, Marilyn

 
9781623366629: An Oasis in Time: How a Day of Rest Can Save Your Life
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 1623366623 ISBN 13: 9781623366629
Verlag: Rodale Books, 2017

Inhaltsangabe

There is a surprising way out of the frenzy, that always-being-behind feeling, and the endless to-do list.

Now more than ever, people are seeking a reprieve from the constant pressure to achieve, produce, and consume. While many turn to sporadic bouts of mindfulness and meditation, organizational change specialist Marilyn Paul offers a complementary solution that is as radical as it is ancient. In her new book An Oasis in Time, Paul focuses on the profound benefits of taking a modern-day Sabbath each week for deep rest and nourishing renewal. The energy, perspective, creativity, sense of well-being, and yes, increased productivity that ensue are lifesaving.

Drawing on Sabbath tradition, contemporary research, and interviews with scores of busy people, Paul shows that it is possible to introduce these practices regardless of your religious beliefs. Starting with just an hour or two, you can carve out the time from your packed schedule, design your weekly oasis experience, and most importantly, change your mind-set so you can enjoy the pleasure of regularly slowing down and savoring life every week. From surrounding yourself with nature to practicing rituals for beginning and ending oasis time to implementing strategies for connecting with friends and family, self, and source, you will discover practical ways to step off the treadmill and into timeless refreshment on your way to a calmer, richer, more fulfilling life.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Marilyn Paul, M.B.A. Ph.D., is a coach, author, speaker, and senior consultant with Bridgeway Partners, an organizational consulting group based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Marilyn has taught at the Yale School of Medicine, the Massachusetts General Hospital School for Health Professions, and the Hebrew University School of Public Health. Marilyn’s work is about improving people’s lives at work, at home, and in the world. She is the author of It's Hard to Make a Difference When You Can't Find Your Keys. Marilyn and her work have been featured in USA Today, The Boston Globe, The Chicago Tribune, Spirituality Magazine, and Yoga Journal.

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Part I: Getting Started

CHAPTER

1

LIVING IN OVERDRIVE

We're Moving Too Fast

We live in speeded-up times. We value hustle, big goals, and the rush of accomplishment. We love efficiency and effectiveness. Even our leisure activities can feel like boxes on a checklist. Meditate: Check. Exercise: Check. Volunteer: Check. Cook a nice meal: Check. Plan special activities with the kids or with friends: Check. We add more and more tasks to our days until our lives feel more like one long list of things that must get done than a series of deeply soul-satisfying experiences. In his famous movie Modern Times, Charlie Chaplin plays his Little Tramp as a factory worker at a company whose goal is to speed up production. To that end, the company introduces the Billows Feeding Machine, which feeds lunch to the workers while they are still on the assembly line. Work never stops. The proud inventor of the machine, J. Widdecombe Billows, introduces Charlie's character to the revolving platefuls of food, the automatic food pusher, and the hydro-compressed, sterilized mouth wiper. There are three delicious courses, but poor Charlie cannot eat fast enough, and the machine goes out of control, maniacally slapping food all over his face. Today, few of us would even consider a three-course lunch; instead, we eat nutritional power bars so we can skip lunch altogether and keep working. Is Charlie, the Little Tramp, enjoying his lunch break? Of course not. We're not enjoying ours much either.

WE ARE WORKING TOO HARD

Let me introduce you to a few people I know who are trying their hardest to live well and who feel trapped in nonstop activity. Alan, a computer-savvy physician, went into health information systems with a strong sense of a healing mission, fully intending to contribute his unusual skill set to transforming the way medicine is delivered. But his description of an average day shows the deep impact of his team's chronic overwork. Sleep poorly. Awaken worried about getting through day because of fatigue. Pledge to stay cool, avoid snapping. Arrive in time for first meeting, but without real time to organize day because meetings start earlier and earlier-eight o'clock is the new nine o'clock. Rush from meeting to meeting-never fully prepared. Keep trying to stay friendly, calm, avoid "anger seepage." Rush home late, no time to clean up from day. Many things undone, swear to do them that night. Skip exercise. Cranky with family. Wife, kids don't think you are much fun. Work after dinner but don't finish. Go to bed worrying about items left unfinished. Fall asleep at 1:00 or 2:00 a.m. after taking an Ambien. Alan sees the irony that his own health is suffering as he misses out on good times with his family and feels constantly overwhelmed and exhausted. He wants to break free from the cycles of tension he feels caught in- recently, he started meditating, which helps a bit-but most of the time, he just can't stop, even to take one weekend off. Like many people, Alan lives in a tyranny of busyness under a trance of constant action. Alan is just one of millions of people struggling to keep up within a culture avid for productivity. The American Institute of Stress reports that job pressures are far and away the major source of tension for Americans. Job stress costs an estimated $300 billion (yes, that's billion, not million) a year in absenteeism, turnover, diminished productivity, and medical, legal, and insurance costs.1 Ironically, ongoing stress ultimately causes people to work far less productively, thus requiring more time on the job to complete the same amount of work. Why do people put up with the stress? When people believe that their value comes from their accomplishments, it is especially hard to stop striving for those accomplishments. Barbara is a lawyer for a real estate conglomerate outside of Atlanta. Like many lawyers, she tracks her time in six-minute increments. She's under constant pressure and feels that she doesn't have enough time even to track her time properly. She is constantly behind. Weekends are a blur of catching up on errands and household maintenance and squeezing in a workout and an occasional brunch with friends. Barbara deeply values her friendships and misses time connecting with herself and others. She would love to take a break of some kind, any kind, but she is too far behind to consider a vacation. Like many Americans, Barbara feels that if she takes time off, she will put her work and her job in jeopardy. Americans have among the fewest paid days off of workers in any developed country, and what days they receive are often forfeited: In 2013, US employees failed to use 500 million vacation days-more than $100 billion worth of paid time.2 Additionally, the United States is the only advanced economy that does not mandate vacation time. Twenty-five percent of full-time workers in the United States have no paid vacation at all. Not surprisingly, 70 percent of Americans feel vacation deprived. By contrast, the Netherlands is almost as productive as the United States, yet the Dutch "work shorter hours each day, get six weeks' paid vacation, and are even given an 8% holiday bonus," according to a 2012 Time article.3 Layla is an interior designer in suburban Chicago. She chose to work from home so she could have more control over her time and more time with her kids. But it's not working out that way. Layla loves her work. Color, texture, and fabric feed her sense of vitality, and she has a special gift for helping people create a deep sense of home. But her days are a conglomeration of attending client meetings, ordering furniture, writing proposals, invoicing, and responding to urgent client requests. Her kids are in after-school care, and her weekends are packed with errands and cobbled-together playdates. When asked about the possibility of dedicated time off each week, Layla responds, "I love the idea, but that's out of the question. I just have too much to do." She's been having trouble sleeping as she runs the everydayathon, an apt term coined by Loyola University philosophy professor Al Gini, PhD. Self-employment, sadly, doesn't get us off the treadmill. Layla joins the millions of us who are sleep deprived-40 percent of Americans, according to a recent Gallup poll. Good sleep is just as important to our health as exercise and good food. Researchers have found that remaining awake for 17 to 19 hours in a row leads to an impairment of cognitive abilities similar to being legally drunk.4 Imagine what happens after days, weeks, months, and years of sleep deprivation. Yet many of us believe that we can forgo hours of sleep and pay no price. From an early age, Nashville-based James looked at his overworked baby boomer parents and swore he was going to live a different kind of life. Now he's a musician who loves playing gigs on weekends and working with troubled teens during the week. He has a couple of interesting part-time jobs, and he makes sure he always has time for music, his true love. Yet James doesn't get a break either, for, as he told me, he never feels that he has quite earned it. He's considered practicing a type of Sabbath time, but he rarely thinks he has done enough to merit carving out real downtime. He knows he would love it, but, like his parents, oddly enough, he can't make the time to fully rest and renew his soul. Alan, Barbara, and Layla face the same challenge in their individual ways: Our culture is obsessed with getting things done. Even James, the musician who has constructed his life to avoid being like his overworked parents, struggles to take time for himself. The social and economic pressures of work and achievement are so fierce that they even shape the experiences of those who consciously try to resist them. We live in a world that doesn't understand the true, measureable value and benefits of downtime, and we are...

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Verlag
Rodale Books
Erscheinungsdatum
2017
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1623366623
ISBN 13 
9781623366629
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
272
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Nicht verfügbar