Their Urgency Is Not Your Emergency

Their urgency is not your emergency.

I work with a lot of corporate clients. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard the statement “I have a work emergency, so I don’t have time to…” You can fill in the blank here, but it’s always some type of self care behavior like eating a healthy meal, or exercising, or whatever that they don’t have time to do. The point is they’re sacrificing their health for productivity.

I’ll be honest, I have a hard time wrapping my head around this. Coming from a background of EMS where an emergency WAS literally life-or-death in some instances, the idea of an email or a phone call being an emergency just doesn’t compute with my EMT brain. When I worked EMS, I would respond to emergencies all the time during my shift, but the second I clocked out, they were no longer my problem…

This isn’t the case in the corporate world, as I have found out working with hundreds of clients over the years.

So, learning how to help my clients incorporate healthy habits into their hectic lifestyles has been a challenge… and I don’t take the exact same approach with everyone, because everyone is facing different challenges. But, the one thing I’ve learned is, we have to figure out a way to create space in their life before we can add healthy habits… because telling someone to add something onto their already too full plate, just makes a big mess when that plate tips over.

Creating space in our lives requires a mindset shift. It takes an awareness of what’s causing us stress, what’s actually our stress & what’s stress that’s being projected onto us from others, and an awareness of what’s actually important in our lives… very often when working with clients, what they say is important is getting pushed onto the back burner while they’re focused on what others want them to do. Learning to discern what’s theirs to hold & what’s not, is eye-opening, and when they take action to release what’s not theirs, it’s empowering. They learn to take back their life, which allows them to enjoy their life… and they gain their health in the process. When this happens, they find that they are just as effective at work, and they’re more present at home.

As the expression goes… you can’t pour from an empty cup. If you want to be effective in any part of your life long term, you HAVE to take care of your physical, mental, emotional & spiritual health. If you don’t make time for your wellness, you’ll be forced to take time for your illness.

As a person who lost her health, I can tell you the healing journey from sickness to health is long & expensive… and it’s a life-long commitment to maintain my reclaimed health. I ignored the signals of burnout my body was telling me for years & just continued to mentally push through… then there came a point where I literally couldn’t push through anymore. It didn’t matter how much I wanted to keep burning that candle on both ends… I couldn’t, because I had burned it down to nothing. My only option was to stop, and make a new “candle”. It took time & patience. It took letting go of unrealistic expectations of myself. It took boundaries around my work & other areas of my life. It took intention. It took acceptance that I may never be able to physically do what I did before & acceptance that my body may forever look differently than it did before. It took letting go of my old life completely… and it was worth it.

If you’re feeling burnt out & your body is asking for rest, I encourage you to do it. Rest is not laziness. Rest is productive. For you to show up as your best self for those around you… you first have to create your best self by nourishing your body & giving it what it needs to function optimally.

There is no “emergency” that’s worth sacrificing your health for. Even in EMS, the first rule we follow is “determine if the scene is safe before you enter” regardless of how life-threatening the situation is for the patient. We’re taught to not sacrifice our lives & safety to save someone else… because if we get injured or die, we’re just compounding the problem & we’re no longer available to help others. It’s counterproductive. Don’t let anyone else convince you that your health & well-being is less important than their “emergency”. You are deserving of health & vitality… not because you earned it by doing more, but because it’s your basic human right.

For things to change in the corporate world, where health is no longer sacrificed for productivity, it takes all of us to start setting boundaries around work. All. Of. Us. It’s not anyone else’s job to establish & enforce our boundaries… it’s ours alone…. and our health in the individual & as a society depends on it.

XO,

-Stacie