Have you been treating your time and life like it was a never-ending resource? Using busyness (or business) to keep from thinking about what you really want but aren’t pursuing, doing, being?
I promise, this is NOT another do it all, have it all mantra.
Our culture promotes busyness as opposed to fulfillment, satisfaction and being true to our life. Want evidence, look at how we run our children’s lives. We feel guilty if we don’t sign them up for every available activity. Even when we know we’re all running on empty, can’t squeeze any more positive activity in, we still have that haunting FOMO. We worry that our kids will miss out if we don’t push for that last activity that might lead to all good things in life. We worry that all of those activities are what will make their life “good.”
I remember when my kids were involved in school activities, I knew research showed that kids needed to have free time to just relax, think, get bored, be creative, be and play. Article after article talked about how limiting each kid to one or two activities they really liked was better. More articles talked about the problem with kids not getting enough sleep because they had so much activity time delaying homework time which shorted sleep time. And I knew in my gut, that when we (me, my kids, people in general) get too many things going, we just become exhausted, physically and emotionally. So nobody was benefiting.
But with all of that knowledge there was still the nagging guilt mother thing in the back of my head. That fear that I was causing my kids to miss out on something. Or that their future life was doomed because they didn’t run to more activities. That line of baloney that sweeps us away, telling us that if we “do” enough stuff, stay busy enough, we will get what we want.
And the flip side of that “busyness” coin is that we are too tired and too scared to sit quietly and really hear ourselves. Keeping the “noise” of activities, computer games, tv shows, social media, whatever, going keeps us running in place in our ruts.
We’re putting off till tomorrow, every day, living the life we want. And filling the vacuum with “white noise” to avoid the scariest thing ever – pursuing our dreams. Forget Halloween being scary. The fear of failing at what we really want is way beyond contemplation. We tell ourselves we don’t have time today. Besides we always have tomorrow, right? Better to postpone then fail?
And if we’re doing that, two things usually happen in what we choose for ourselves. One, we either do the same, over scheduling busyness. Two, and/or out of exhaustion, fear, shame, or whatever, we don’t choose the thing we really want, Ever! Suddenly one day your realize there are a whole lot less tomorrows possible then there are yesterdays that have already evaporated.
How long do you want to let that go on? Is it time for a life wellness check-up to see if you’re following the path to what you want? The pain of self-examination is much less than the pain of regret for life not really lived. Because as we know, your life is not a renewable source.
You only get so many days here and you probably won’t know ahead of time when the expiration day is. Besides, wouldn’t you like to feel satisfied with the way you’ve lived most days, not just a few?
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