Projects, Not Problems

It was just a simple social media post from a beloved childhood character. “Elmo is just checking in! How is everybody doing?”

And the floodgates opened, sparking an unfettered discussion about our wellness.

From experience, I can say maintaining wellness is the most important thing we can do for ourselves and the people around us – at work and at home. Wellness is balance. It’s about making sure I’m maintaining perspective and taking care of myself: physically, emotionally and spiritually.

I didn’t always feel that way; I used to think of wellness as a purely physical concept. Life events, dealing with death and illness in my family, have led me to realize that wellness is also taking care of yourself to make sure you have the capacity to handle the heavy things when they get thrown at you.

Time management used to be a challenge for me. There was a point in my career when I was always overwhelmed, stressed out and over-scheduled. I couldn’t do anything without dropping something else. I had to get control.

I know I’m not alone in that struggle. Everyone is busy, trying to find enough hours in the day to accomplish all they need to do. Then one day, Julie Ireland gave me the advice I needed to gain perspective and balance: “There are no problems. Just projects.”

When my son was a high school senior, he planned to attend a college 15 hours away. I was unsure if we had the kind of relationship I wanted. It wasn’t a problem, it was a project that I needed to work on. I became more intentional about making more time to talk to him, and learning to talk to him as an adult. At the end of his senior year, we took a trip together, and we had grown a lot closer. It took me prioritizing our relationship to set aside the time to work on that.

That same attitude helped me to turn my physical wellness around in my 40s. Test results from an annual check-up were a wake-up call. My health became a new project. I talked to my friend Anthony Krebs , who had improved his own fitness, and he told me he’d been running. I had never been athletic growing up, but I started running. Over time, it helped me get in shape and just feel better. Now, when I feel like I’ve gotten off track, I sign up for a half marathon to give myself another project to work on.

Approaching projects – not problems – has been a key to success for me, personally and professionally. I encourage anyone feeling overwhelmed to pick just one of those “problems,” and take a different approach. Break it down and find the steps to complete the project. Along the way, you might also find that you’ve created space for yourself to have capacity, to maintain perspective, and to feel personal wellness. ?