Do You Have the Courage to Simply Stop?

The Tao, a great book of Chinese wisdom, asks: Can you let your mud settle?

I envision a murky glass of water, its contents swirling this way and that. Agitate it more, and you'll get impossibly obscured vision and an inability to get your bearings or to navigate.

Wait long enough, and your mud will settle.

Teachers have benefited from the sabbatical system, which more or less affords them to take off from their posts every six or seven years, to write those postponed papers, and to do that critical or imaginative or clear thinking that only solace and peace can facilitate.

But in business and in most occupations, we're not allowed to do that. The zeitgeist of contemporary work is to incessantly do more in less time, to be maximally productive, and to even forego our vacations in the interest of being team players.

"Stopping," argues for the opposite approach. The author of a book bearing this title, a former Catholic priest, says taking time off is something everyone should do on a regular basis.

But it takes courage. Revisit the quote from the Tao. It asks: CAN you let your mud settle?

As in, do you have the capability, the guts, and even the sense of adventure to let go of the madcap routines that support your daily life?

About a hundred fifty years ago, Henry David Thoreau observed that most people "Lead lives of quiet desperation."

Today, it is noisier, but desperate nonetheless.

Multi-tasking, job enlargement, outsourcing, and downsizing actually make QUIET desperation sound good.

Give yourself a break; literally.

In at least a modest way, try Stopping, and see if that suddenly clear glass looks half full, again.

"Do you have the capability, the guts, and the sense of adventure to let go of the madcap routines that support your daily life?" asks this best-selling author, top speaker, international consultant, and popular radio and TV expert commentator.