Under Too Much Pressure, Ready to Pop Your Top?

Fast paced life constantly under pressure?

"I can't do it all to please everyone!"
"There's not enough hours in the day."
"I'm racing against the clock."

These are but a few of the comments we utter in our stressed-out fast-paced life. Its true, even though we now have all kinds of products and services to make our lives easier it seems like its anything but easy. We feel as frazzled as a rattlesnake flipping' around on PCP.

If we're not busy we feel like we're not doing or contributing enough. Frustrated, we're busy but not pleasing anyone let alone ourselves. We fill every awake moment with an activity whether its writing an email, leading a meeting, shopping, playing sports, writing the next great novel, or any of the infinite number of ways we occupy our time.

Not satisfied with just doing one activity at a time, we've become experts at multitasking. We talk on the phone while we drive our car while we're listening to music. We text our co-workers while we're listening to a presentation while we're thinking about how we're going to do the next big thing on our list of very important things that must get done.

Those who get the most stuff done well quickly rise in esteem and up the social and professional ladder. Only to take on more stuff that must get done, more places to go, more people to see.

People admire people who get a stuff done. Whether you're a serial entrepreneur or a charity president soccer mom - and everything else in between - you're under pressure to do more, be more and have more.

"They intoxicate themselves with work so they won't see how they really are." - Aldous Huxley

No matter how you define work or being busy, whether it be running a household and raising children to building the family wealth legacy, our attention to our work gives us permission not to take a look within to see what's really going on, what's really causing us to feel the stress of being under pressure.

The cold truth is if we're stressed we're out of sync with ourselves, at our deepest level.

If we were being busy in a way that is in harmony with who we really are, what we really want and our core values life generally flows. We can be busy, very busy, and not feel pressured.

Let's look at the definition of 'pressure': an oppressive condition of physical or mental or social or economic distress. Now let's examine the definition of the word 'distress': psychological suffering.

Pressure, then, is more about our mental state than what is real. The feelings of pressure are very real. Not all reasons for feeling pressure, though, are real.

Often when we're under stress, the pressure we feel is brought upon us by ourselves. The events of our lives alone is not what makes us feel like we live in a pressure cooker. It is the meaning we give to those events that make us sweat.

When we're attaching meaning - what we think not accomplishing 'enough' or 'doing everything' or 'not doing anything at all' says about us and the life we live - we're layering misguided perspectives one on top of another.

For example, if I think I have to say yes to every demand, meet every expectation, as a business owner in order prove myself as some sort of a superwoman then what am I really saying and feeling about myself? Is anything less that an unrealistic superwoman not 'good enough'?

If I had a child and missed a recital because I had other responsibilities am I not a 'good enough' mother?

Racing around trying to be all things to all people to prove some sort of inner angst is an impossible way to live. More importantly we miss out on life itself.

How? Because if we're always thinking about the next thing that has to be done, the next place to be, the next person to see we're not really where we are in the present moment. We feel unfulfilled because we're missing the whole of our experiences. To numb the pain of emotional emptiness we set out to keep ourselves too busy to consider what we're really trying to get done.

Fill an emotional void within.

If you feel the pressure of a frenzied life then its time to stop for a moment. Get centered - reconnect with the truth of who you are and what you value most. Include yourself in the mix of the people you take care of. Validate yourself not by what you do and have but by who you are being.

Prioritize according to what's most important to you - things that will advance what you want to be remembered for. I'm not the first one who will remind you that on that fateful last day on this Earth you're not going to look back and wish you spent more time in the office or jet setting hither and yon.

You'll wish you spent more time with what makes your heart sing. You were not born to go to your grave with your song still in you.

Sing out instead of stress out.

And remember to breathe.