Workaholic? Relax And Be More Productive

If you’re a workaholic you’re living a miserable life. Workaholism means working too much, putting your work first and defining your life through work.

Why not transform yourself by establishing an intimate relationship with yourself and others?

Don’t worry. You’ll produce more and have a fuller life too 🙂

Creativity is Satisfying

You may ask why workaholism should be a problem when our society idealizes work and rewards it with money, status, success, praise and acclamation.

The fact is that it’s creativity, not work that provides satisfaction. Creativity is an act of play and self-exploration.

It’s at once easy and satisfying to become a workaholic, especially if you have a job like mine where you serve and help people and you enjoy your work.

I’ve lived like that for nine years. My family and friends all got used to live with a workaholic.

They questioned it. Others said they appreciated it.

My family accepted the feeling of coming second and continued to love me.

When I finally awakened I realized my workaholic behaviour.  This happened after life forced me to live apart from my husband and daughter and I had to live on my own.

There’s a whole story there, which I may share with you one day.

My husband and daughter weren’t around causing me to take breaks. I didn’t make time for my mind to relax, my body and soul became tired and my immune system gave me signals via infections.

I knew there was something wrong but was still struggling to grasp the full picture. Then a piece of news I received clarified the fog for me.

A kind person, years ago, while we were in the local market, shopping, told me about the five things people regret before they die.

He passed away last week.

Workaholic Is Addicted

We can see our life as a journey to increase our consciousness or to learn, to extend the boundaries of our ‘self-knowledge’.  For example, while our parents seem perfect to us when we are young, we start questioning this as we reach adolescence.

Normally, the lessons and dangers on our path scare and exhaust us, so we tend to stop.

An adolescent who fails to question his or her parents, and cannot extend the boundaries of their self-knowledge, ends up depending on them.

Let’s say you have managed to separate yourself from your parents, you may later come across other tools on your path and perceive them as goals. You could develop an addiction to making money, furthering your education or even serving humanity.

Addictions can be seen as symptoms arising from other problems. Eating addiction can be seen as a sign of failure to experience love consciously.  Alcohol addiction is thought to be a sign of avoiding intimacy.  Smoking addiction may be a sign of ignoring the need for communication, contact or freedom.

Like any addiction, the common thread to all of these is we’ve forgotten about our journey of self-discovery. We have closed ourselves to new experiences. We no longer learn because we fell prey to our fears.

Workaholism is another of these addictions.

The Andidote For Workaholic is Intimacy

The way to free yourself from addiction is tknow that life is a process of self-discovery. To live fully we must face and accept our desires and fears.

There are many layers to the fears that lead us to seek haven in addictions.

A very common and basic fear is that of rejection and abandonment. It is the fear of losing a relationship temporarily or permanently.

It stops us from developing honest and close relationships. Intimacy, with ourselves, our parents, children, partners and friends are important.

Relationships without intimacy will not comfort, nurture, develop or satisfy us.

I’ve only recently was able to face the fear that lies beneath my workaholic behaviour and stopped me from being honest to myself.

What if the needs and wants of my husband and daughter clashed with mine and we drifted apart?

The feeling that I feared was the pain of separation. This was a shadow message that I wanted to ignore.

So, being a workaholic seemed to work for me. It was accepted and approved. Our family seemed to be safeguarded as I didn’t have time to think about what I wanted.

Yet, I was working so much that after a while the amount and quality of time I spent with my family dwindled.

Life doesn’t have to be like that.

When we were forced to spend half the year in different countries the separation that I feared happened. Only now do I see that it was nothing I couldn’t handle.

How much easier life would be if we all knew the only way we could befriend our shadow-self is to accept it without judgment!

You really can be seen as who you are. You will feel embraced and loved only when there is intimacy in your relationships. You can find new ways to reveal your reality without hiding yourself.

Many couples struggle with addictions in a circle of insincerity or lack of intimacy.

I see smoking and alcohol addiction most.

Couples need spaces where they can face themselves and their relationships earnestly.

I believe couples therapy helps couples who don’t know they have serious problems in their relationship yet are working like crazy.

By the way, if you’ve been wondering, here are the top five regrets of the dying:

• I wish I had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
• I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.
• I wish I’d had expressed my feelings with more courage.
• I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends, spent more time with them and shared myself.
• I wish that I had let myself lead a happier life.

 

Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)image:@Saigon

You can listen to the soundtrack of this video from here.