Getting Your Juice Back

I want to start out today with a confession. For the past two weeks I have been burned out. The stresses of work (finding it not doing it), chasing money for work done, and the daily rigors of life have gotten me down. My sleep patterns are off and I have been pretty much in isolation mode for a while. These symptoms are not new to me. I know that from time to time I get like this.

I was having a telephone conversation with a friend today that usually knows when I am down in the dumps. Yet, as friends will do, we carried on the conversation anyway. During our conversation we talked about serious things, business matters, world events, and life in general. The conversation included some verbal gymnastics, analysis, and lots of laughter. At the end of the conversation I found that I felt so much better than I did at the beginning.

In this conversation I learned a thing or two about myself that I had not previously paid attention to. I think that what I learned would be helpful to most of us. Looking back at my conversation we spent almost no time commiserating. The conversation focused instead on things that were outside of the very things that were getting me down. We talked about business but not so much our businesses but other things that were happening in the business world. We sparred on an issue or two, and we laughed about some of the silly things going on both with ourselves and in the world. We talked about our flaws and foibles in a way that reminded me that we are all human and generally imperfect.

All of this got me thinking about what it takes to recharge the spirit. We have often heard that laughter is the best medicine. Yet as grown ups we don’t allow ourselves to engage in the general silliness that once gave us so much fun. With my friend I find that I can be silly and we poke fun at each other. We laugh at ourselves and we laugh at each other. The laughter feels good. We also talked about things that were outside of the box. There was no need to sound profound or prove our intelligence we were just bouncing off of one another.

Many of us have seen the television commercial where the young man has just started his first job. In the commercial this young man is constantly being called on his cell phone by his friends that have not started working yet. They ask him silly questions like “guess how many cookies I have in my mouth?” Or remind him that he needs to bring home toilet paper from work because they are out of it at the house. All of the calls are silly and very immature. But they make you laugh because we can remember what things were like for many of us at the beginning of our “serious work” career. At least for me when I started out in the work world I worked hard and I played hard. As I have gotten older I find that more and more I just work hard or do hard work.

One of the ways that I recharge my battery is that I will spend time playing video games. I will play puzzle games like Collapse, or games like Splinter Cell or Medal of Honor. These games can generally consume large amounts of time that we have so little of in our hectic day-to-day lives. However, the games allow me to escape for a short while using skills that I don’t need for work. I compete either with or against my boys to see who can hold the record for our house in a particular game. You might think that someone my age should not spend too much time playing games, and I would generally agree with you. But brief periods of time spent on these activities help us to kick back and let go for a while.

I was reading a story about Pixar Entertainment recently which talked about the incredible pressures they have placed upon themselves to produce one blockbuster hit after another in the shortest time frames imaginable. The pressures are immense and the work week often exceeds eighty hours. Yet, these people remain creative and avoid burnout. The turnover rate at Pixar is only 5%. How do they do this? The answer is that they have an organized system that helps people to recharge. The company provides improvisational acting classes for employees that are interested. They play basketball or volley ball at lunch time. Generally all of the employees are permitted time to get out of the box and just play a while.

We have all got to get some fun and general silliness back into our lives. We can start by not taking ourselves so seriously. This should be easy enough since if you really checked most of the people you are dealing with probably don’t take you very seriously anyway. Why not join them and even amp it up a bit. I keep several sets of juggling balls in my office at home. I have not practiced them in months. However, today I plan to practice for a while. Usually one of my sons will join me and we work on getting better. If you don’t have a game on your computer, then get one. Get one that challenges you but that you can learn quickly then compete against your kids. You probably will not beat them but having them beat you (and this is because kids are better than all of us at these games) will encourage their self-esteem and confidence. You can also have a lot of fun with them.

Another thing I like to do is tell jokes. I actually practice a few of them just so that I can have them at the ready when I talk to a friend. Helping my friends laugh helps me to laugh too. If jokes are not your thing you could try telling the truth. I know that I do enough stupid things on a daily basis that when I recount these stories to my friends we always get a good laugh. If you have not done anything really dumb that you can talk about then you really are not getting out enough. Go ahead and try laughing at yourself for a change.

Each of us has a long list of things to do. We have goals to accomplish and many serious pursuits that we must engage in. Yet, if you are tired, or burned out you are not going to get them done anyway. Have a little fun and play a while. Make sure that you manage to laugh out loud. The problems in your life are not going anywhere so you might as well take a minute to laugh, joke and crack a smile. It worked for me today and I know that it can’t hurt if you give it a try.