MINDSET
"BUSY" DOESN'T SERVE YOU
June 7, 2022
When was the last time you asked someone, “How are you?”, and the answer had nothing to do with being busy. A while, right? It seems so simple and yet this is a particularly dangerous mindset trap.
Let me tell you about how I learned this the hard way. I was at a weekend retreat - 200 women in the room, a long weekend of self-development. It was Sunday morning and my coach was speaking and she told some unsuspecting woman, “Stop telling yourself you’re so busy. You have to quit that. There’s your problem right there. All of you, listen to me right now. You’ve got to stop doing that.” I was jotting a note in my notebook and it was one of those mic drop, record scratch moments. I wanted to say, “Wait. Backup. What?” The speaker went on to something else but I was stuck in time. My mind raced as I tried to wrap my head around this concept. Resistance would be too faint a word for my reaction. I looked around the room at all these women as the chip on my shoulder began to grow. “I am busy. I might be the busiest person in this room. You have no idea,” I told myself. I listed out all my responsibilities in my head: Mom to 2 young daughters, wife to a pilot who was gone half the week, daughter, friend, Chief Financial Officer for a large company, Girl Scout Leader, family planner, cook, taxi, housekeeper...I could go on. “I am busy,” I reassured myself. But my mind was stuck in a loop as I tried both to process this idea.
That evening I flew home from the retreat. All the way to the airport my mind continued on this loop. As I got comfortable on the plane, I thought to myself, “What if she’s right? What if my schedule is just what it is? What if telling myself I’m busy doesn’t serve me and is the source of some of my challenges.” I took the first growth step...being willing to accept a new idea, even if it was uncomfortable.
Over the next few months I worked on this...hard. I had a sneaking suspicion that my level of protest and resistance meant there was something here I needed to learn. I started by trying to tell myself I wasn’t busy, but that didn’t resonate. I opted for thinking some days were “heavy calendar days”. Then I moved to “I’ll need to prioritize today”. And finally, “I have time for my purpose and priorities.”
I’ve made a lot of progress with this. That’s not to say that I get it right all the time or that it’s always easy. A couple of Saturdays ago, I was finishing my coffee and pondering all the things that needed to get done. After a couple of back-to-back sports weekends, the house was in need of some attention and the yard too, plus running kids around and trying to find a few moments of peace. As I sat and pondered, the overwhelm crept up and my inaction took over. And then I reminded myself, “I have time for my purpose and priorities.” And I set about figuring out what those were for the day. I knew what had to get done and I needed to defer some things. I would have preferred to knock it all out but that was unrealistic. So I got going on the important things.
Why does this language matter? Because thoughts generate feelings that drive actions. “I’m so busy” kicks off a stress response that drives inaction. Swap that for “I have time for my purpose and priorities” and it drives a feeling of resolve to figure it out and take action.
CHOOSE THOUGHTS THAT DRIVE THE ACTION YOU WANT TO TAKE.
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