Karen Keen

I had planned to attend a one-day leadership conference today. It has an impressive line-up of speakers and a range of topics I am excited about, things like “Practices of Leading for the Long Haul” and “Leading with Resilience.” Another presentation covers “Mental Health and Resilience in Ministry.” It’s exactly what I need right now. So, why am I not there? Truth be told, I’m exhausted. I couldn’t bring myself to make the four-hour round-trip drive.

This past year, I took on a second job to help a nonprofit in need that is a making a profound difference in people’s lives. But in the process, I added more work to an already full plate. Significantly, I made this decision at the very moment I was striving toward work/life balance. Over and over, I find myself say yes when I should be saying no.

A variety of reasons contribute to an inability to say no, including:

• Guilt for saying no because we want to please other people.
• Excitement at the prospect of a new adventure.
• Desire to contribute to a good cause.
• Not wanting to miss out on anything.
• Discomfort sitting with grief that comes with selectivity.
• Addiction to adrenaline.
• Compulsion to achieve to bolster self-esteem and status.
• Workaholism out of pure enjoyment of working (“work is play”).

As I watched the clock tick past the point of no return when I could no longer arrive at the leadership conference in time, I felt guilt. I felt grief. Guilt for failing to follow through on a commitment. Grief because I didn’t want to miss out. And yet, I made the right choice. I needed to say no.

Feelings of guilt and grief at saying no can obscure the truth of victory. Today I overcame a compulsion to over-do, and yet it didn’t feel good. Paradoxically, adrenaline that comes from workaholism does feels good. I’m addicted to adrenaline. I love the feeling of a new adventure. I hate missing out. I want to do all the things. I love going, going, and going. And yet it’s killing me. Literally, workaholism and the frenetic American pace is damaging our bodies.

Recently, I read with interest the journey of Kirsten Powers who wrote an essay entitled, “The way we live in the United States is not normal.” Powers, who is a CNN senior political analyst and a USA Today columnist announced plans to move to Italy.  She is literally leaving the country to combat workaholism. She writes:

“I started to have a dawning awareness that we don’t have to live this way. I also began to notice how calm I felt in Italy for extended periods, even when working from there, so it wasn’t due to being on vacation. I could feel my nervous system settle. I noticed how I began to find the famous Italian inefficiency charming. It was a kind of quiet rebuke to the productivity fetish in the United States, where businesses are forever trying to ‘optimize’ and ‘streamline’ to please their shareholders and enrich their CEOs while making life increasingly miserable for their employees.”

The fact that some of us need to leave the country to achieve work/life balance tells us how difficult it can be to make changes to one’s lifestyle in American culture. For the workaholic or the adrenaline junkie, living in the United States is like trying to lose weight while living in a cake shop or trying to get sober while living in bar. Believe it or not, some places in the world have a saner tempo built into the cultural fabric itself.

But that’s little consolation for someone like me who is married and caring for an elderly father-in-law. I can’t just uproot and move across the ocean, not if I want to keep my family together. And even if I could, I don’t really want to move to a new country and start over. I want to figure out how to be sustainable here.

I can’t say I’ve figured it out yet. But success often looks like getting back on the wagon again and again. It’s counting the small victories like the one I had this morning when I said “no.” No, I’m not going to make that four-hour round-trip drive, even for something good. Instead, I will pay attention to my feelings of guilt and grief and speak the truth to them, “It’s okay to slow down. It’s okay to savor one experience instead of ten. It’s okay to sit with small, but necessary ‘losses’ of opportunity. Take a deep breath and enjoy the calm.”

Note: In case you are wondering, yes, I plan to let go of my second job. It was always intended to be temporary. for a year or two. After this past year of trying to do too much, I’ve decided not to extend the second job any longer. God willing, by January, we’ll have a replacement. Hold me to it!