Do you tend to associate timelines or schedules as your measure of fulfillment?
What this means is:
You quantify the kind of effort with each deadline and even define your emotions based on it.
You also celebrate tasks completed based on schedules you set forth.
Yes, this approach gives us a sense of completion. But we can also feel the hangover of winning to be very short-lived, superficial fulfillment, to feeling empty immediately afterward.
As we put it, if we use the concept of time (or schedules we need to beat) as a yardstick of whether or not we did great, we missed tapping into the creative energy source that makes operating our role worthwhile and fulfilling,
Moment by moment,
Bit by bit,
Fully involved in each experience.
This yardstick can enable our departure from feeling fulfilled based on how engaged we are with the work in front of us and towards the unintended impact of beating timelines and schedules- the feeling of overwhelm, discontent, and a shallow sense of completion because we are betting our well-being to the notion of “only-if” we did it.
What if we immerse ourselves in the concept of time without our habitual thinking about what it means to beat time?
We instead engage our role with all our resources that we can readily access in the present moment: creativity, energy, resourcefulness, and curiosity.
How would this impact us and our role differently?
For me, I gained more focus, and clarity and less feeling overwhelmed by these (outside) influences on what completing our role means.
Let me know how this plays out with yours.