Are you wondering if you're a workaholic? Or maybe

you wear the badge of being a workaholic with pride? Oh, this

episode is for you. If you think you are one or you know you are.

You're listening to the Dynamic Women podcast. Each week you'll

be inspired by our global community of women. They'll

share with you tools and stories to help you be dynamic in every

area of life. Here's your host, award-winning coach and the CEO

and founder of Dynamic Women, Diane Rolston.

Hello, lovely dynamic women. Welcome to the Dynamic Women

Podcast. I'm Diane Rolston, your host. Today we're going to talk

about how to know if you're a workaholic and how it's hurting

you. So I encourage you, first of all, go to the show notes

where you're going to be able to do the How Much of A Workaholic

Are You Quiz. Because you probably if you're listening to

this, have a strong inclination that you are a workaholic.

Now in society, it's often time so workaholics it shows that

you're passionate about what you do, you're proud of what you do.

And we're kind of in the position where we clap for you.

We go, oh, wow, you're so busy. And oh, you're doing so many

great things. And workaholics are often rewarded at work, they

often set the bar so high that it is like work, the company is

going wow, there's such a model employee, they're working so

hard, yet there could be damage that is being done to themselves

and to others.

So let me go through a bunch of the different aspects of how do

you know if you're a workaholic, I also encourage you to do the

quiz so that you know how much of a workaholic are you, I'm

also going to go through the different ways that it's hurting

you. And then in the next episode, I'm gonna go into more

detail about some really clear really simple ways that you can

stop being a workaholic, or at least reduce the amount of hurt

that it's doing to you. So how do you know you're a workaholic,

I'm gonna go through 10 different things, but I'll go

through them pretty quickly. But with each one, I'm going to tell

you how it's hurting you as well. And then hey, if by

listening to this, you're inspired to stop being

workaholic, wonderful.

Number one, you work longer hours than others. So maybe the

way this shows up, if you work in a company, as you show up

first you leave last in your business, maybe you are still

working into the night, where you maybe miss dinner, because

you're working or you don't finish your day till seven, or

maybe you finish at five, but then you go back to it for

another round between maybe seven and 10. And for the moms

out there, I know this often happens because your kids come

home at three. And so you're working later in the day. Now

working longer hours than others can lead to burnout, right?

Plus, it's taking away the time that you have to be off. So you

feel on all the time plus, it sets a precedence, especially if

you are at a company where they come to expect you to produce

that high level of work or that amount of work. Because you're

at those amount of hours. And when you try to reduce the

hours, you're not going to be able to get the same results.

It's just not possible with the amount of hours.

The second one is default is work, right? So you have a

couple of free hours here or there. You directly go to work.

And I see this a lot in my entrepreneurs. You got a couple

of hours on a Saturday afternoon, what do you decide to

do get assigned to work, right? And so you're always turning to

work rather than other things. So how is that hurting you? When

default is work, that's the thing that consumes most of your

time, and your energy, rather than the other things. And I'm

going to get into that one. Next.

So the third one is your fun and recreation part of life is

lacking. So if we look at the wheel of life, I do a wheel with

10 different areas. And in that when your fun and recreation

part is lacking, it means you're not having fun, you don't have

hobbies or other interests. And the issue with that. You're now

looking to work for all your fulfillment. You're not growing

as a person in other ways. And you're not able to just chill

out and have fun and develop yourself and be able to find I'm

going into a lot of the other points. I'm trying to curve

myself here. But when you don't have that fun and recreation,

then it feels scary to take time off. I know that one of my

clients in the past she had really a lot of hard hard time

wanting to take time off because with no fun and recreation. She

was worried about like what am I going to do when I'm not at

work.

The fourth thing is you're always thinking about work,

right? So you're at a dinner with girlfriends, you're

thinking about work. You're maybe hanging out with your

kids, you're thinking about work. You are on vacation,

you're thinking about work, and your brain is always on work, it

just doesn't get a time off. It doesn't have that opportunity to

say, okay, work is over here. And fun is over here and

families over here, it's just always going on in the

background, that's stressful. You maybe are always in that

kind of high level, adrenal gland cortisol pump in place,

that can lead to the next problem.

Number five, your stress is high. It's hurting you right?

When your stress is high cortisol levels are high, your

adrenal glands are pushing. This causes you to hold weight. I'm

not a doctor, but I've gone through this myself. And so your

stress is high, you're getting maybe headaches, you're getting

body pains, you're maybe getting sick more, because your body

doesn't have that time to rest and your mind doesn't have that

time to be off.

Number six, you don't take proper vacations. Hmm, yeah,

Have you have you taken like a 10 day vacation or a one week

vacation? Or what I've seen in clients is that they will book

time off, and they will fill those days with catching up on

work, or planning for the next quarter. That's not the

intention of a vacation. That's not the intention of taking time

off. Time off means not time on your work. And you're like,

Yeah, but that's that's what I liked doing with that time.

Well, maybe if you had the opportunity to lay on a beach,

or do an adventure, do a cruise, go sightseeing, I don't, learn

how to cook Thai food, do yoga retreat, maybe if you had the

opportunity to do that, then you'd allow yourself to have a

proper vacation and you'd enjoy it. When we don't have that

complete time off. It's hard to feel rested, you're not having

something to look forward to, you don't have something

different. And what I found in my recent vacation was, I was

able to connect more with who I fully am as a person, which was

really amazing.

The next one, number seven, you choose work over personal

commitments. And so maybe on a Friday, you see that you have a

doctor's appointment, but there's a report that you want

to work on a little bit more to finesse it a little bit more. So

you skip your doctor's appointment. Or maybe you're not

even making doctor's appointments at all. Or you're

not giving yourself the opportunity to go to the gym

because you have work to do you're not doing date nights,

you're not going to your your kids, maybe events that are

happening through school because you're choosing work. Maybe on

the weekends you miss out on stuff because you choose to work

rather than choose to do the things in your life that are

more personal and important to you in that regard. Because

you're choosing work now. Now does this hurt you? Well, it's

kind of obvious that the doctor stuff, maybe you're in pain and

you need to do physio or do massage and now you're not. And

so you're hurting even more, right? And you're also telling

yourself that you don't matter as much as work does that you're

going to push these things aside that they don't they don't

matter to you and so your circle and your bubble of what life is

like and what your experiences are get very, very, very small.

Number eight, you even work when you are sick or hurting. I'll

admit I've been guilty of this I had a speaking engagement and I

had food poisoning the night before and so the whole night I

was hugging the toilet bowl. not literally but I was hugging the

toilet bowl and was sick all night. And so I still showered

in the morning got ready and off I went. Now not ideal I did push

through but it was for that specific occasion. But when I

got COVID I took a week and a half off basically reduced my

hours. I cancelled things I just didn't try to push through and

any other time now that I'm sick or hurt I'm really try hard not

not to work but when you do that you risk the chance of, one

making other sick but two, the thing is that you are going to

extend the life of that illness or sickness or injury because

you're not resting. Think you can figure out how that can hurt

you, right?

Number nine you work through your lunch, right? Lunch, what's

lunch, I just sit and eat at my desk. And I'm super guilty of

this, I actually right there have lunch dishes sitting there,

and it happens, it happens. But when you don't take a break,

then your brain doesn't have time to just reset and have

quiet time. And so you fatigue a lot faster when you don't have

that break. Plus, it's not good for your eyes and your brain to

be staring at a computer or doing whatever you're doing

repetitively, or over and over again, without having that

moment of rest.

And the last one, you have a hard time unplugging from work.

Anyone guilty of that? Anyone been out and receiving messages?

Or kind of sneak off to the bathroom at a dinner to try and

take a work call? Or are you just oh, I just have to send

this email or I have to do this thing. Well, when you have a

hard time unplugging from work, it means you're always plugged

in. And when you're always plugged in, you're too easily

accessible. People get access to you people are constantly in

your space, and you don't have any time to just let everything

go to reset, to recharge, to rejuvenate. You're always on.

So in these 10, which ones are the ones you have the most

trouble with? I'd love to hear from you. Because what I'll do

is not only will in the next episode, will I talk about some

solutions that you can go through. But if you let me know

which ones are most, the most hard for you to get rid of. And

the ones that you want some more strategy around, I will create

some specific training videos on how to get rid of those specific

aspects of being a workaholic.

Now, I mentioned about the quiz, please do the quiz, because it's

gonna let you know how you know if you're workaholic and how

much of a workaholic, are you? That's kind of important,

because you're going to know if is this a problem? Or is this

something that's I kind of haven't checked, I just have to

watch it. So do that. That's going to give you some really

great insight. And if you're thinking Diane, well, I'd love

to not be a workaholic, I just have so much work.

Please know that we do have the Virtual Assistant Made Easy

Program where I hire a VA for you, a virtual assistant from

the Philippines. I then help you and your VA to figure out what

to delegate what to pass off. How do you train them all the

tools, I set everything up for you in the Tools area, so that

you can just jump in, use the pieces that I'm teaching you in

order to be able to pass off and delegate work to your VA's. Some

of the results my clients have had are being noticed and being

invited to do a speaking engagement. I've had a client

get three new clients in one week, another client in the

program finished their book, another client is making their

first course. And so there's so many opportunities to be able to

not be a workaholic by passing off some work. If you want to

know about more about that, please check the notes to find

the link for not only the quiz, but for the VA Made Easy

Program.

And if you would like to pass off your social media content

creation and social media management through scheduling of

your posts, then please reach out personally to me diane@diane

rolston.com. We have a very new, not fully launched program right

now, where we are going to provide those services where you

just provide me with a you know short piece of content and I'm

we're able to repurpose that right across the board. So it's

going to take you about 60 to 90 minutes a week total to have all

of your social media content created and posted by my VA

team. Sounds good.

Okay, so stay tuned for the next episode, where I am going to

give you some solutions to how to stop being a workaholic

because it's hurting you and we want you to be at like the

optimal level that you can be at. You liked the episode.

Please hit subscribe, share with a friend and tell us what you

think. Until next time, everyone. Stay dynamic!

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