When you think about
professional success, it is common to imagine successful people in their
element; at peak productivity, showing off the talents that make them
great. It is difficult to picture them
lying around doing nothing when we read about how they put in the long hours
tackling tough projects and then hit the gym or jogging trail early the next
morning. What do they do when they get
home?
What they do to occupy their
free time may not have entered your mind.
Yet, it should. Especially, if you
are often tempted to spend your free time playing games on your smartphone,
want to have fun just hanging out with your friend, or hear yourself thinking, I’m bored out of my mind.
Naturally,
not all successful people are the same.
They enjoy a wide variety of lifestyles and pastimes. Still, many will tell you that how they
structure their free time matters almost as much as how they spend their
industrious hours on the job. They want
to fully engage with life through their leisure pursuits to build more quality
into their lives.
Ask yourself, when the weekend rolls around, are you really enjoying yourself or just killing time with meaningless pleasures? Do you say you value your leisure time, but still make poor choices?
In our version of a weekend warrior you choose to do anything you want that incorporates more meaningful experiences into your leisure hours.
Everything you think or do either
will empower you or be disheartening. Instead
of killing time, you could emulate the people in those success stories who
spend their non-working hours making every moment count. Be a weekend warrior to lead a more empowered
life to feel connected to the whole world through your leisure activities. Sorry,
no wild safaris or mountain climbing, unless you choose.
In current lingo, the term weekend
warrior implies a person is enthusiastically ready to leave family and jobs to
test themselves physically by engaging in a strenuous and sometimes risky activity
on weekends. It is kind of a super-hero
status for high powered executives.
In our version of a weekend
warrior you choose to do anything you want that incorporates more meaningful
experiences into your leisure hours. It
could be nurturing relationships, self-care, volunteering, or having engaging
experiences while pursuing hobbies, sports, or learning. Each thing your weekend warrior self chooses
to do is an opportunity to feel liberated, to challenge yourself, and to understand
and nurture who you are. As a weekend
warrior your goal is to use your leisure time to be a super-hero by becoming the
best version of you.
Interestingly, those hall-marks
of leisure time that are characteristic of so many success stories happen to be
the fundamental elements of happiness. Leisure
time plays a major role in how you find meaning in life and thrive to a state of
happiness you may have only imagined.
We might associate the word
warrior with the word adventure. That
conjures up exhilarating, maybe hazardous images of trekking through the
jungles of the Amazon or cage diving with white sharks. The beauty of adventure, however, is that it
also means you open yourself up to the experience and beauty of your life,
whether it is a new experience or if you’ve seen it a thousand times
before. Adventure for a Corro vision of the weekend
warrior is not about engaging in a strenuous activity with a high risk of
muscle strains or ligament tears. It is
about facing each experience with anticipation and deliberation, seeing the
world from a different perspective or finding ways to do something differently,
and also – very importantly – engaging in the space and the silence in between.
Our lives overflow with busyness, noise,
distractions, chaos, and demands on our attention. Our weekend warriors find adventure in
moving more deliberately through the chaos and noise to create space to engage
with things that have merit and significance in their lives. You can start by being intentional about incorporating
aspects of these six elements into your free-time routines. You do not have to be perfect at any of
them. You might be surprised that these
adventures flow into a beautiful way to move through life.
Being
a weekend warrior is not about doing hard things. One of the best ways to relax, reduce stress
and negative emotions while increasing positive emotions is to pursue
meaningful leisure activities. You can
seek stimulation through pursuit of a creative hobby, physical, cultural or
spiritual activity, social engagement, or mindful relaxation. It does not matter if you enjoy a series of
small pleasures, sharpen your senses for extended periods, amuse yourself
reading or gaze at the stars, the key is that they are activities of your
choosing and that you relish the experience, a feeling that
lingers. Ideally, it is nice to have
more than one leisure pursuit or adventure to keep you grounded and relieve
stress.
All
leisure pursuits can improve brain function and allow you to use your signature
strengths in different ways. Vacations
and opportunities to relax help you gain perspective on your work and how you
engage with life.
One of the most profound adventures you can have in your life is the connection you have with other human beings. By nature, we are hard-wired to bond and depend on other humans. We thrive on human connections with parents, siblings, peers, friends, bosses, and coworkers. Weekend warriors want to feel deeply connected to other people, fully seen, understood, appreciated by them, and above all feel secure in those relationships. Your positive relationships that promote love, intimacy, and a strong emotional and physical interaction help you to be authentic and emotionally rich because you trust the community of humans around you to be supportive. Socialization is vital for mental and emotional health, because even the most independent people can suffer from loneliness or depression.
On the job you may be eager to get the latest news related to your industry and stay ahead of trends. The weekend warrior is also eager – often relentless – to learn about other subjects, expand skill-sets, keep the brain sharp, advance a hobby or passion, and learn about the world. In the success stories we hear or read about we are more apt to learn successful individuals take classes in novel areas. They are adventurous in wanting to push the limits of their own understanding and use their signature strengths in different ways; exposure to new disciplines cultivates this. The point is curiosity and continuous learning is what makes a weekend warrior well-rounded enough to think in new and innovative ways.
Self-care is 100% about choosing to care for your mind, body and spirit. Many people view self-care as an indulgence rather than a priority. An annual visit to a day spa is not adequate self-care. If you do not take steps to promote your own well-being on a daily basis you will mostly feel overwhelmed, tired, and ill-equipped to handle life's inevitable challenges. There is no one-size fits all approach to your adventure into self-care. As a weekend warrior your biggest job is probably going to be to to make “you” the priority and also be proactive about these aspects of your life:
Sleep
Fresh air
Nutrition
Physical exercise
Seeking medical attention
Healthy boundaries
Laughing out loud
Asking yourself questions about your life
and experiences
Learning to show compassion and kindness
to yourself
Incorporating activities into your life
that help you feel recharged
Engaging in spiritual practices that you
find fulfilling
Face-to-face time with family and friends
Keeping your mind sharp with activities
that stimulate you
Practicing self-compassion and acceptance
Employing healthy ways to process your
emotions
Promoting curiosity to create wonder in
your life
Physical
appearance – when you look good you feel good.
Finally,
the most successful people are inclined to spend time volunteering and feel
happier about it. What weekend warrior doesn’t want opportunities
to socialize, meet interesting or like-minded people, make new friends, while nurturing
their well-being?
When you volunteer, it
is a way to use your character strengths in different ways, discover new
talents, and feel more spiritually and culturally connected. Depending on where and how they volunteer, you
can spend time outside and/or exercise at the same time. Volunteering allows
you to feel you are part of the something bigger, like the whole world. Volunteering is a perfect way to give back to
the community that probably had a hand in your motivations and success.
This sixth element is
special. It actually might be the most
difficult adventure for a budding warrior.
It is closely aligned with self-care and relaxation and we cannot stress
enough how absolutely necessary it is to your warrior well-being. In our busy and oft time chaotic schedule,
we are always on the move, often distracted.
We are prone to finish one task
and immediately launch ourselves into the next.
When there is nothing to do we reach for a phone or computer. We want to fill the space.
Even when you engage in your weekend
warrior adventures, this will happen, some quick task will need attention. What would it be like to fill the spaces with
silence, have intervals of breathing time, stillness, solitude, privacy, and
reflection? Including space and silence can be beneficial
and useful. If you have not had enough
of it, will certainly be an adventure.
All your activities have importance – the routine and adventurous – but
when each is done, don’t rush through the space. Stop and give meaning and weight to the space
between activities. Taking a pause, breathe
deeply, reflect how the activity went.
Pause long enough to ask and answer, “How do I want to spend the next
hour of my life?” The weekend warrior is
deliberate about making time for silence in the space and listening to what the
silence is calling you to do.
Focusing too much on your career
is self-sabotage, no matter how counterintuitive that might sound. If you want to be successful and happy you
have to prioritize other key aspects of your life. You may need to organize your schedule or
free up time to do so.
What our version of a weekend warrior strives to do is optimize
opportunities to discover life, feel good about it and strengthened by it. They are obliged to no one but themselves,
but feel a connection to everyone and everything. Every
leisure activity becomes an adventure. Those intentions, feelings and actions spill
over into the rest of the week. When you
feel this way you can assign your name to our super-hero list of our vision of
the weekend warriors.
