Stop "Working" So Hard.

• Author: Puterbaugh, Dolores T.
• Position: PARTING THOUGHTS - Column

ODDS ARE, you are working too hard in at least a few areas of your life--and clinical experience has taught me that you are bringing some of that on yourself. It neither is necessary nor good. Caught up in the maelstrom, you cannot see that, and neither can I when it comes to my self-created little hamster wheels.

If you exercise regularly, and are "old school" about it, as I was for decades--well, research indicates you probably are working too hard. It turns out that moderate exercise is better, in the long haul, than extreme pursuits, yet many of us got mired in the heart-pounding--and possibly heart-damaging--rush of more-is-better.

If you are the responsible-minded parent of a minor child, you probably are working too hard in many ways. You are over-explaining, over-reminding, over-scheduling your child, or otherwise making life more complex than it needs to be. If you remind your child over and over to do things and play count-the-chances, you are working too hard. Trust me: tell a normal three-year-old that, in two weeks, we are going to the zoo--once, just mention it once--and that child will NOT forget. Three-year-olds may develop a startlingly precocious grasp of the passage of time, or keep asking if today is the day, but they will not forget. So, if you get the tot's attention and ask him to pick up his blocks, and he repeats back what you want, you need not engage in the 1-2-3-hey, do not make me repeat myself routine.

Moreover, your child's future college education does not hinge on whether he or she is playing soccer four times a week in preschool. It will be okay.

If you are a typical American, you also are working too hard because of made-up rules you have absorbed, or chosen for yourself, and have not revisited. We may, regrettably, no longer keep the words, "Hear, O Israel! The Lord our G*d, the Lord is Onef..." fixed before us always, but we grasp other practices as if they were as central to our existence as the Shema.

For example, 75% of American women use some sort of hair coloring, either DIY or salon. To what extent this started as a merry experiment or form of revolt, and became a trap, probably varies. It is a safe guess that a certain amount of this has become "what I automatically do," rather than, "what I really want to do with my time and money, on purpose." Getting the monthly dye/highlight/lowlight/double process has become a necessary task. Do not smirk too much, boys: apparently a sizable number of you go...