Change One Hour

Recently, I watched Shonda Rhimes’s TED talk, My Year of Saying Yes to Everything.

I expected to be inspired.

I didn’t expect to hear so much of my own story inside hers.

Rhimes, the television writer and producer behind Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal, and How to Get Away with Murder, was at the height of extraordinary success. She was working long days and carrying enormous responsibility.

And she loved the work.

She called the feeling she experienced when she was completely immersed in it “the hum.”

Then the hum stopped.

The work didn’t stop. The success didn’t stop. She continued producing, leading, and delivering at an astonishing level.

But she wasn’t having fun anymore.

Nothing was falling apart.

That was the dangerous part.

Then one of her daughters asked, “Momma, wanna play?”

Because Rhimes had committed to saying yes, she did.

That small yes brought her out of the constant motion of work and into laughter, love, and presence. Her way back didn’t begin with leaving her career.

It began with a few minutes of play.

The Danger No One Sees

I don’t know what Rhimes would call her experience. What I recognized was a pattern I call Devitalization.

The way I describe it is:

Burnout is depletion.

Devitalization is disconnection.

Burnout says, I can’t keep going.

Devitalization says, I can keep going. I just can’t remember why any of this once felt so meaningful.

That is why Devitalization can be so difficult to recognize.

You are still capable. Still dependable. Still producing results. The people around you may see nothing but success.

And because nothing appears to be wrong, you assume nothing is.

But the evidence is often hiding in smaller places.

The hobby you stopped making time for.

The friend you keep meaning to call.

The vacation you spent checking your phone.

The good meeting that no longer produces a good feeling.

The question What do you do for fun? that has become surprisingly difficult to answer.

That question stopped me too.

After decades as a healthcare executive, CEO, and campus president, I could tell you what I had built, what I led, and who needed me.

But when someone asked what I did simply because it made me happy, I didn’t have an easy answer.

I hadn’t lost my ability to succeed.

I had lost touch with some of what made success worth having.

Awareness Is Only the Pause

You cannot rebuild what you cannot see. And you cannot rise from something you have never named.

But awareness is not the destination.

Awareness is the pause that makes a pivot possible.

At some point, seeing has to become doing.

This is where many of us get stuck. We assume a big realization requires a big response.

Quit the job.

Sell the house.

Move somewhere new.

Reinvent your entire life.

But you may not need to change your whole life to begin finding yourself inside it again.

You may need to change one hour.

Change One Hour

Give one hour this week to something that makes you feel more like yourself.

Call the friend without having a reason.

Pick up the book you keep moving from one table to another.

Walk without tracking your steps or listening to anything.

Return to the class you once loved.

Sit with someone you care about and leave your phone in another room.

Spend twenty minutes exploring the dream you keep calling unrealistic.

Or rest—deliberately, without accomplishing anything first.

Successful people have a particular way of turning everything into another achievement. We track the walk. Monetize the hobby. Optimize the rest. Measure whether the hour was used well.

That is not the assignment.

You don’t have to become good at anything. You don’t have to produce anything. You don’t even have to tell anyone you did it.

The only question is whether, when the hour is over, you feel a little more like yourself.

One hour will not rebuild your life.

But it can interrupt the pattern of postponing yourself. It can remind you that the parts of you that disappeared beneath the responsibilities are still there.

They may not need to be reinvented.

They may simply need your attention.

Perhaps your next chapter doesn’t begin with a five-year plan.

Perhaps it begins with one hour that belongs to you.

Keep Rising, My Friends! 💗

New editions of Beyond the Title come out on the first of each month.