Happy Monday Canna Fam! I hope everybody is making the best of a very tough year. I know I have personally gone up and down with my emotions and mental state thus far but striving to close the year focused and happy. I want to touch on a topic in this blog that most of us tend to ignore or push to the side when it comes to your everyday work life or career. I think a lot of us equate having a career to being a full blown superhero. We tend to put so much pressure on ourselves to succeed, that I think a lot of us bury our personal life under the rug. I am sure for some of you, like myself, you can live your life like this for an extremely long time before you realize just how much of a toll it has taken on you. As much as we all love to dive into our professions, our personal lives are extremely important and tend to suffer as a result of our passions toward our craft. I hope to help you find a better balance and your “WHY” when it comes to our obsessions with work, and I especially hope to remind you to spend some time on YOU.
I have always wondered why so many of us seem to work our asses off for this huge end goal, but we tend to forget to take time to live in the process of it all. What is it all for if we never actually spend time on ourselves and the relationships that we work so hard for in the first place? I wrote about living in the present in my blog titled, “Slow Down to Live”, and really covered balance, but I want to focus a little more on why we are so obsessed with working and success, even if we lose sight of all of the reasons we are even trying to be successful in the process. I think it is extremely important to check in with yourself often and remind yourself what your “WHY” is. Why did you choose the career you did? Why do you spend so much time dedicated to your job and less time dedicated to your family? What is this obsession with stability we all have and at what point will we feel comfortable enough to enjoy where we are at in life? I think that I definitely got some of my obsession with working from my father. He was always on the phone working when I was a kid, and now here I am working on my phone 24/7. I personally am not driven by money, and despite the fact I understand it is absolutely necessary and definitely know I deserve a good salary with all of the work I put in, it does not motivate me to put in the actual work. Instead, I am goal driven, and motivated by the fact that I am serving a purpose and can create change with a brand that is truly great. Although this may sound better without the money factor, it is equally as easy to get caught up in your goals as it is money.
Growing up in a small town, and more specifically on a ranch, I was raised on work ethic and setting goals. My parents were very successful business owners, and had themselves came from nothing, so they wanted to make sure my sister and I were raised seeing what hard work looks like. As a result, I started working at the age of 13 and haven’t really learned how to put on the brakes since. I see people in their 20’s out enjoying going on vacations with their groups of friends, and I look at myself getting excited when I get to see my groups of friends at cannabis events in the industry. Now don’t get me wrong, I love my work friends and family an insane amount and would not change it for the world, but the fun that I participate in is still always work related. I hate that I fear taking a vacation, because God forbid the cannabis industry not have my presence for a week, LMAO. Seriously though, what is this illegitimate fear that I am needed so badly that I do not even deserve a break a week out of the year?! I know I am not alone when I write about this either. Currently, my last vacation was July of 2019 and I spent it in Canada with my work family. Once again, I love my work family and the time that I get to spend with them, but there was no me shutting off during this time. I was still working and responding to customers, and I did not take seriously how important it is to just disconnect from time to time and remember the fact you have a personal life and that work needs are not the only ones that need to be fulfilled. How do we get ourselves to disconnect from this constant catering to customers, and switch that to catering to ourselves and loved ones a bit more?
Have you ever looked at your life and wondered if you are really living? I know for myself; I tend to slip into autopilot often and go through the daily routine without actually checking in on my personal needs and desires. This is even worse in my own life if I am single, as I tend to put myself on the back burner even more if I know no one is around to tell me not too. I personally do not have any children right now, but I cannot even imagine being the kind of person that I am, with my dedication to my career, and then trying to juggle having a family to give my love and attention to as well. I can imagine it becomes quite exhausting with the time and attention we give our careers, to then try and figure out how to also give that same amount of time and energy toward your loved ones. Unfortunately, I think that our society does this a little backwards into what receives more genuine and positive energy. For us workaholics, I think that our families tend to suffer sometimes and get the version of us that is already so exhausted and burnt out from the rest of the day. How do we find a way to not let all of our positive energy be drained by our career, and instead put that energy into what our careers are supporting at the end of the day- our family?
With this topic, I challenge you to not only remind yourself of your “WHY”, but to also make sure that your “WHY” supports who you are today. If your career was driven by the need to support your spouse and kids and give them a good life, then remind yourself that your time will always be important to them as well. We should not sacrifice all of our time with our loved ones, because we justify the need for money to fix all of our problems. Money provides stability, but it does not provide love and it does not make up for lost time as much as we all wish it did. At 27, am I grateful for the work ethic I learned from my father? Absofuckinlutely, I am insanely grateful to have learned the tools I have to be successful. At 27, do I look back and wish I had a better relationship with that man on a family level? Every damn day! There is no price tag on spending time with your children, and for every small amount of time you choose to dedicate to them over your career, I promise you they will absolutely notice. Life is short guys, and we all die at the end of it, but we definitely do not all live. Put your careers on pause for a second and give your loved ones a hug. We do not get a second chance at life, and I sure as hell do not want to look back and know that I gave most of my time and energy to my job, and my loved ones received the burnt-out version of myself. Let’s work on being better wives, husbands, children, fathers, mothers, grandparents, siblings, and lovers. We get one opportunity to do this right, so let’s take a day off and more importantly, let’s be okay with it.
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