[dropcap background=”yes” color=”#333333″]I[/dropcap] love my job. I love that I get to do it from home. That being said I have been known to, at times, let my professional life bleed into my personal life. When you work from home it can be hard to leave the work day behind you because you are physically in the same place. I have never identified with being a workaholic – my main goal is to create multiple sources of passive income so that we can sustain our lifestyle without me having to work much at all.
I have never been interested in sacrificing time with my family but it can be easy to let certain habits pull you away from your family and back into work. Checking my e-mail is the worst of these habits. It seems harmless, but the reality is that the constant pull to check-in is actually a detriment not only to your personal time but also to your business. Tim Ferris, author of The 4-Hour Workweek said this about checking your email. Don’t do it a lot — it isn’t productive. Check your e-mail twice a day. That’s it. If you are constantly checking your e-mail during your work day then you are never fully present in the actual tasks at hand (unless your job is to respond to emails all day) and if you allow yourself to check your e-mail after work hours then you cannot be fully present with the people in front of you.
This is a lesson that my wife recently taught me and it was so powerful I would like to share it with you:
My wife, Ayla and I were at the park. Ayla was playing happily with rocks while Laura watched her. It was a lovely moment, but nothing particularly eventful was happening and so my mind slipped into a business related thought. I was expecting an e-mail from a client and I thought it would be harmless to open my e-mail and check to see if they had replied, but of course once you glance at your e-mail it is easy to get sidetracked by all the other e-mails in your inbox. Laura saw me and asked what I was doing, I told her and she paused, walked over to me and said, “Put your phone away and close your eyes. Now. Don’t worry I’ll watch Ayla.” Feeling a bit surprised and amused I put my phone in my pocket and closed my eyes. She then went on to say this:
Do you remember when we were walking here (to the park) and there was that douche bag who drove really fast past us before we crossed the street? Well I want you to go back to that moment and I want you to imagine that Ayla and I were walking ahead of you.
We started crossing the street and before you even know what happened that car, that pathetic black car with the useless driver inside hit both Ayla and I. Now, I won’t get you to imagine the details so I want you to jump ahead to being at the hospital. You are in a daze of mental pain and confusion and anger. Doctors and nurses are swarming you with information that you can’t digest. The words “life-support” and “2% chance” and “ruptured” are floating through your head and feel like as though you are going to pass out. A doctor is talking to you and you close your eyes and you try to wake yourself up from this nightmare.
As you close your eyes you go back in your mind to the moment before we crossed the street and you hold us back. The car zips by without hurting anyone. We casually joke about the driver being a douchebag and we make it safely to the park. You imagine the sun finally shining and Ayla running around with baby handfuls of rocks and you see me and think I have never looked so beautiful. And as you dream of this alternate reality while the hospital machines buzz around in the background you say to yourself that you would give anything to have that. Anything in the world to be in that moment and not this one.
And then by some form of grace you are here. The sound of concerned doctors and machines are replaced with sound of gentle wind and Ayla babbling and you feel the sun on your face and you feel me touch your face.
And you open your eyes.
Dearest dreamers, though this scenario may have seemed a bit extreme (Laura tends to have a flare for the dramatic 😉 ) it was exactly what I needed to bring me back to the importance of the present moment. I wanted to share this with you to encourage you to think twice before pulling out your phone in a moment where nothing is happening.
Ignore that pull to check-in with the virtual world and instead give your love to the people around you and allow yourself to absorb the simplicity and beauty of the moment.
Yours truly,
Brad
