For the past few months I have been working with a prestigious hospital to develop a residential weight management program. This state of the art, individualized, medically monitored program will assure fat loss and high level wellness because it is based on validated research from reliable sources and the years of practical experience the accomplished staff brings to the table.

Last week, while working with the administrative staff it became necessary to forge a schedule that assured participants would get the assessments, education, workshops and skill building sessions that will allow them to leave equipped to continue to practice what they learned once they got back home. We found ourselves in a constant struggle to make all the material fit into the 12 day time frame clients will be with us. Suddenly I had an epiphany. If one of the biggest barriers clients face is making time to recreate a life that is geared to wellness were we setting an example by cramming each day so full that there was too little time for simply relaxing. In short, was the process of slowing down going to take too much time?

Most my clients have dedicated their lives to making things happen. They talk a lot about making time to "get away" or to "go on vacation," never realizing that the only thing they can't do well is doing nothing.

Years after learning the hard way that doing nothing was a great way to accomplish something I still have days when I have to remind myself that my serenity is best fostered when I am willing to take time to stop, to look, to listen. Although, more than most people, I know the benefits of rest and relaxation I too often find myself rushing to catch a plane or working overtime to meet a deadline or trying to pack one more thing into an already busy day. The good news is that when I make time to put my feet up (even when that means a mountain hike or a bike ride or putting another plant in my garden) I don't have to sweet talk myself into that lull from the pace required to "make ends meet." I no longer feel pressure to put off until the weekend the time for me to do something by doing nothing. Last Friday, for example, I was looking out my office window and realized that I was only seconds away from the peak moment of my day-simply staring at the flame red leaves of a rapidly growing shrub I decided not to cut back this year. I chose to walk away from the pile of work that would wait until I returned and I spent the next hour doing nothing as I walked through my neighborhood picking up leaves and remembering the joyous days of youth when I'd take them home an press them between pieces of waxed paper.

There was a time when I beat myself up for abandoning an activity midway. I wondered if I had ADD when I was headed for the closet to get a new bag for the vacuum cleaner and found myself rummaging through a pile of pile of postcards looking for the right one to send to a friend far away. I chuckled as I realized that earlier I'd put the postcards down when I got distracted to rearrange the pictures on my wall to accommodate a new painting from a favorite artist.

Years ago I was mentored by "the running doctor," George Sheehan. George and I had an ongoing argument about whether walking was an exercise. One day I challenged him to walk with me up and down the hills of Seattle. He pondered as we walked and soon offered one of the generous pieces of philosophy he often quoted. "You know Henry Thoreau once wrote, 'the walking of which I speak has nothing in it akin to exercise." He added that Thoreau was talking about the process of enjoying leisure.

This week, instead of thinking you have to cram every minute full-even if it's just for thinking, spend more time on the minutes in between the doing and, as I once heard Gary Zukav stay, "Learn to be a human being instead of a human doing."