Masseter

He says I grind my teeth, but my prognosis is good.  He prescribes a mouth guard I plunge into boiling water and mold around my teeth. If forced, I’ll sheepishly admit I am not vigilant; I wear it sporadically.  While I can’t necessarily see in my mouth the evidence of this suspected grinding, it explains the root of a recurring dream waking me with a start when I believe for a moment I’ve broken my molars. He suggests this activity is not confined to sleeping, but sneaks in during my waking hours. Maybe I want to wear this mouth guard during the day? 

When my yoga instructors encourage us to relax our jaws,  I begin to notice I am a habitual jaw-clencher. It’s arguably the strongest muscle in the human body, right up there with the heart pumping blood and the uterus pushing out babies. And it’s interfering with my peace.

As I commit to myself to make room for more balance in my life, I know I am putting in less hours in front of my computer.  However, it’s clear my brain continues to work overtime.  I awaken in darkness attempting to solve complex puzzles.  While every other muscle in my body stiffens overnight from lack of use, my jaw feels like it’s been on the treadmill.  Clearly, the work is seeping outside my waking hours and I’m not sure why.

In my nearly 20 years of employment at my company I think I’ve held something like 14 different roles.  Some are formal declarations of a new job where I actually pick up my things and move to another location with a new client and team, others are casually communicated additions of responsibility lobbed my way as I walk past my manager’s desk; remarks like “I’ve been thinking you should oversee all the projects in Latin America.”  One thing that’s consistent as I’m fortunate to move up the ladder is the need to redefine the meaning of work. 

To my closest friends, I am brave enough to divulge I have a hard time describing what it is that I do in my current job. How, I wonder, do I sum up how I spend my time during any given day and the value it brings to my company?  I notice I am required to constantly pivot. I can have up to ten meetings in a day, all on entirely different topics.  This leaves little time to be thoroughly prepared for any conversation, nor to do anything traditionally described as “real work”. 

I continue to be amazed that meeting people is actually a job requirement.  I might not have a position for someone I meet, but if I’m doing my job well, I’m talking to people I might want to recruit at a future point in time.  It’s my job to remember every individual who impresses me and stay in touch so I can make a hire when the right position presents itself. 

Taking clients to lunch and carving out time to talk to them is part of my job.  If I’m really good at it, I’m asking pointed questions geared to draw out their biggest problems. It’s my job to listen, to observe, to understand what’s working and what’s not working, to diagnose and put a plan together to make changes.   

And it’s my job to delegate nearly every piece of what I’ve formerly described as “real work” that comes my way.  Because if my time is tied up with those tasks, I don’t have time to do my job.

It all sounds crazy to me, and no wonder up until now I haven’t been able to accept nor succinctly summarize what it is I do!  I can credit Seth Godin and his blog post "Mental load and the worry cache" with the ah-ha moment allowing me to turn the corner and embrace my new normal.    

At the onset of my current job I feel like the first-grader in late August who comes home at the end of those first few school days and needs a nap. It’s a kind of mental exhaustion wiping us out until we figure it out, until we settle into new expectations and a new routine. I need to accept that what I’m doing IS the real work. 

All of this delegation can clearly manifest itself in worry; however, when I look at myself from this new vantage point, I realize it’s not the fear that someone else won’t do the work as well as I would, it’s the accountability and the fear my decisions may result in failure, as Seth describes, that truly keeps me up and wears me down. It causes my mind to work 24/7.  And if I’m being really honest, I would bet the new role I’m playing with my kids since they’ve moved out is causing the same jaw-breaking consternation.

So the question becomes how to quell the fears, and repurpose this energy into something positive.  Leaving worry in the dust is easier said than done.  But maybe it starts with the understanding failure is part of the business of life and we are all more than capable of recovering from it. The most powerful muscle we can exert on any situation, by far, is belief in ourselves.