Busyness

Have you noticed that when you greet friends and colleagues these days and ask them how they are, the standard response is, “I am so busy.” I even find myself responding in this way even though the word busy is not part of my normal lexicon. After uttering the word busy, I usually self-correct and say, “well I mean GOOD busy; I am enjoying life and what I do.”  Just the other day I caught myself doing it again, and I saw this as a SIGN. Am I really that busy? What is busy and what does it mean? Is being busy just a habit? Do I stay busy to avoid other things that I see as less important or less interesting? Or do I stay busy because I am a ‘doing addict’ and I simply don’t know how to ‘be’?

I suspect that there is some self-discovery lurking in the fabric of these questions. The one that strikes the strongest chord however is the ‘doing addict’ issue. I believe many of us simply get caught up on the treadmill of life and that doing becomes a habit, unconscious, and robotic. I am left wondering, what if we became more conscious, and what if we woke up? Would we still continue all this doing just to fill the space in our life or would we choose another option?

I have decided to take pause and consider these questions. Care to join me? As I began my inquiry, I chatted with a few friends. As we discussed the notion of busyness and how our lives were unfolding these days, I proposed that perhaps we did not want to be busy any longer, that what we really wanted was to be joyfully engaged.  A few nodding heads confirmed that I was on the right track.

Joyfully engaged – what would that look like as opposed to simply busy? It means that we actually become clear on where we want to invest our energy. Now there’s a thought – that would require a little reflection, something that seems to be scarce these days. Reflection requires stopping, stepping out of doing and into being for a few minutes to actually have the space to discern what I want to engage in. That in itself breaks the busyness cycle and gets me off that darn treadmill.

So, what would be perfect for me? What is it I really want – at work, in relationships with others, at play? And if I took the time to actually respond to this “I want…” what would be different in life? Oh Oh! I might have to start saying ‘NO’ to some things, the most difficult two letter word in the English vocabulary, especially when my lips so easily form the ‘YES’ word. I loved what Jack Canfield said in his book Success Principles: “I am not saying NO to you, I am saying YES to me.”

I keep repeating this to myself and teaching it to others as this phrase is a permission slip to put you and your desires first on your priority list. Yes, there it is, the priority list. Where are you on yours? I have to ask, as so often when I ask this question in my seminars, the participants simply laugh as they know that they, as an item, have probably not even made the priority list of their life, and if they have, they are at the bottom. Busyness is the excuse that emerges when I ask, “And when will you become an item on your list?” Busyness, the great excuse! 

Here’s the challenge – begin to examine your busyness. Ask yourself the same questions I found myself asking. Clarify what is meaningful to you in that busy bee behavior and wonder about whether you are joyfully engaged. Consider how being joyfully engaged would shift your energy and what, in your busyness, would fall off your plate. It is about assessing what is really important to you and what is just filling space in your life. It is time – life is too short as most of us will acknowledge so why not spend those precious minutes and hours being joyfully engaged?

Until next time,

Betty