Do you ever feel like action is taking over your life, leaving you with seemingly no sacred inspiration time?
I have suffered a recent bout of Action Addiction which had obliterated my work effectiveness completely. My mind was alive with four million things to do and was hopping from one to another incessantly.
I started Facebook posts, blog posts and other seemingly mission critical tasks but all stagnated mid-completion.
No sooner had i started one action than my mind proposed another task of greater importance. Tasks of ‘greater importance’ including checking email, quick Facebook browses, tidying my desktop etc. I was doing much but achieving little.
My frustration levels rising and motivation levels dropping I recognised I was stuck in a compulsive drive to do action in attempts to relax myself, but this only achieved the opposite.
How and Why We Get Stuck in Action Mode
The modern world applauds the one who visually appears to be doing the most. Somehow society set 9-5pm as the ideal time for getting work done yet what logic is this based upon? Could we not do more in less time and go home to enjoy life?
The one at work that battles on into overtime regularly gets the attention of the boss whereas the one who actually can focus and achieve much more in less time and is ready for the door at four instead of five often remains unnoticed.
We manage in the end but at what cost?
Where Does Sacred Inspiration Time Fit in Our Work Approach?
We have left nowhere in our working lives for inspiration.
Set yourself down on a meditation cushion mid-morning in the office and see the reaction of your boss. Will they understand it when you explain that those five minutes of meditation actually help you be way more productive on the back of increased mindfulness and concentration levels with combined decreased stress levels?
The busy bee running around like a headless chicken looking busy gets more positive attention in a busy workplace setting for their insatiable appetite for grinding out work.
Reflections and Ideas to Keep Inspired Work Flowing
- Accept that your inspiration time is sacred, literally the most essential action you can put yourself at.
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Feeling inspired you access the creative impulse of the universe in finding solutions that seem to appear out of nowhere.
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Take breaks often throughout your daily work, to reignite your enthusiasm consistently.
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Avoid tempting but useless distractions completely. Turn off your phone, social media pages, emails etc. until you are finished the predetermined mission critical task at hand.
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Create an early morning inspiration ritual of different ideas that get you passionately looking forward to having a great day.
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Inject exercise and movement wherever you can all day no matter how small. Take the stairs, cycle to work, do simple stretches at break, breakup prolonged sitting times with regular short loosening up sessions. Beware! – No movement means physiological stagnation.
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Take one conscious period of dedicated inspiration time per week to stop any momentum of Action Addiction from building. Sunday as God’s day of rest is steeped with massive practical value largely forgotten.
Action with Inspiration leads to a Flowing Beautiful Life Experience
When I recognised I had lost complete balance with my inspiration/action balance I initially had to force myself against my impulse to want to do more work, to just chill out for a while.
Within a day of consciously doing some of the things I love the most, my mind was clearer and my body fresher.
Now a few days later I am again bounding out of bed eager to get going at my work but when, AND ONLY WHEN, I have first got my inspiration momentum going strong.
Great work can only ever come from first being inspired. This is evidenced in every human that has ever created anything of great value in the world. We should never let ourselves settle for producing any action in work, and indeed in life, that is not our best possible.
Offer your inspired action to the world and enjoy the inevitable world-changing effects it will have in the universe.