In everyone's life, there comes a point where we need to stop and think about situations that we are in. Are we doing the right thing? Is it affecting our mental health? Is it effecting the mental health of others?
At certain points in our life, we find ourselves in situations where we need to make a choice. This choice can be for the welfare of ourselves or for the welfare of others, our families or people we are representing. These situations maybe affecting our personal lives to such an extent that they are consuming our every thought.
Take time to Halt and look at the situation, close yourself off from the outside world and take solitude in your self.
Think about yourself, the effect that the situation is having on you and your family. Is it worth it? Ask yourself these questions:
- Have the decisions I made made the situation worse of better?
- Am I causing more problems staying in this position?
- If I left this position, would I feel better?
- If I stay, what are the consequences for me?
- Can I cope with this constant battle every day?
- If I stay, it is going to get worse, will my health deteriorate if I stay?
We all face these questions at some point in our life, we must remember that we are all time limited, we do not know how long that time will be, it maybe years, months, days or even hours.
The Halt2Proceed program encourages people to Halt:
Everyone has a busy life, there are pressures from everywhere. Our world is a very noisy place, there are many distractions. It was once described as ‘The Rat Race’, but it is more than that now, everything is instant, on-demand, society expects instant communication, the art of relaxing and taking solitude has disappeared.
On a tube journey to central London, I analysed the occupants of my carriage, there were 20 people, only 1 person was not using a phone or tablet or reading a newspaper. That person just sat and observed everyone else. That person was me, nobody spoke to each other, they were immersed in their own world, looking at emails, the news or playing games. Some were watching downloaded movies.
We all have an escape, the people watching movies, reading the news or playing games were escaping, they had their own solitude. Others who were checking emails or typing documents were not escaping, they were catching up, preparing for meetings, they were feeling the pressure of life.
It is very difficult to escape in 2020, the on-demand society, with breaking news, social media, emails and the requirement to react to situations all part of our world. Switching off and not looking at emails, messages from work when you are at home is a very difficult thing to do. Most of us now take it as acceptable to answer work emails from home during the evening.
For any parent, the merry go round of children’s activities, school, holidays and sports is one which never seems to end, balancing this with work and home is difficult. Add to the load a manager who is very demanding, who expects you to work in the evenings and the merry go round soon gets overloaded. Most people I speak to tell me that they are tired, the tasks that they face every day seem to get harder and harder, external pressures of money are the main concern for many people today.
The main responses I receive are ‘I need this job, without the money, we would not survive’, and this is true. But how you manage the demands of the job can be changed. I myself was struggling with two business, a charity, a sick 13-year-old son and maintaining a home. After discussing this with my Clore coach (Pat Joseph), we devised a plan of action and I halted, looked at what I was doing day to day and changed it. Not dramatically, just empowered others.
By halting and taking stock of the situation, looking at the areas that I wanted to change and how I was going to achieve them, enabled me to re-adjust my work – life balance. We should all halt at certain times in our life, just stop, take stock of situations that are occurring and make brave decisions to change them. Some issues we believe are beyond our control, such as the pressures from managers to perform, but we are in control. We should not allow external pressures to affect our lives, we all need to Halt. This is the only way we will proceed.
Take time today to Halt and say 'Is it really worth it?'. If the answer is no, make changes, leave a position, take a sabbatical, take time for yourself. Be Brave!
You can purchase a copy of Halt2Proceed from Amazon in Paperback or Kindle format by clicking here.
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