"I'm really busy right now, but it's a good busy." I heard theseexact words quite a few times the first few weeks of the year.Every time I heard someone say it, it made me wonder what thatreally means. When I heard it from one person after another, Ibecame quite curious. Although I knew that I was in a transitionmode, and that I was happy about being less than busy, it stillcaused me to feel twinges of concern. I actually had momentswhe
I became conce
ed about my lack of busyness - was even alittle envious - and also wondered why so many people weresaying the same exact thing. What did this mean?
In divine order, I was given a chance to experience busynessfirst hand during the first couple of weeks in February.Truthfully, I didn't like it. I'm pretty sure my busyness wasn'ta "good busy," as I gather "good busy" means that it'saccompanied by lots of money. Is it because I was busy doingthings I didn't want to spend time doing, or spending time onthings that no longer suited my purpose and my goals? Or, am Ithe kind of person who doesn't thrive on busyness, no matter howgood it may be?
Last Wednesday I decided I'd had enough. I noticed I was havinga hard time sleeping and that I was going to bed later andlater. On many nights I wasn't fully present during family time(I was still working in my head even when I "stopped"), and itwas beginning to take a toll on my health.
On this important Wednesday I decided that if I was unhappyabout my stretched schedule, then I was the one person who coulddo something about it. First, I had to determine the suddensource of my busyness. Then I had to make decisions about mypriorities, including what I was spending time on that wasn'tserving me. I chose to let go of some pretty interesting things,and recognized the need to make more time for others.
This is not necessarily an easy thing to do, but I knew it wasimportant. As someone who needs to manage my level of stress inorder to stay healthy, it was critical. I think we all need tomonitor our busyness more than we usually do, but someone whohas a physical challenge, one that has caused weakness in theirbody system, really needs to do this. Either way, for mostpeople, busyness is not a long-term health plan. nnOur most important business asset is our body
When we are in business for ourselves, we pay a lot of attentionto our assets and our goals, but I think we can easily forgetthat our most important asset is our body! We cannot do our workand fulfill our mission if our body can't support us. Many of usleft the corporate world because we had little room to honor ourpersonal needs, and now we're doing the same thing to ourselves.As they say, wherever you go, there you are.
In today's busy world, self-care habits are the first to go.Whenever I work with an entrepreneur who is attempting to bringmore order to their life - the very person that's supposed tohave the most ability to choose how they spend their time -exercise and self-care routines are the most frequently namedmissing practices. Next come consistent time off in the eveningsand on weekends.nnThe role of adrenaline
Adrenaline is very misleading. It is a chemical produced by youradrenal glands that fools you into thinking you have plenty ofenergy. It is one of two chemicals released by the glands inyour body (cortisol is the other one) when you get into thosecrunchy deadline situations. It's the chemical that has you say,"I do my best work under pressure." It's also detrimental toyour health in long-term doses and adrenaline production is asymptom of busyness.
Not everyone reacts the same way to stress (and different peoplerespond differently to different kinds of stress - the filtersare individual), but if you are reading this and experiencing anagging feeling, perhaps it's because your body wisdom issending you messages. When I did some research for this article,I searched through Google.com using the following 3 words:adrenaline health problems. I wanted to make sure I had my factsstraight about adrenaline. All links and articles I pulled up onthe first 2 pages were discussions about stress in whichadrenaline and cortisol were mentioned. nnMaking Changes
No, it's not easy to change your habits, to slow down, or to letgo of projects that don't truly serve your purpose. In addition,without adrenaline pumping through you, you may experience atemporary loss of creativity and drive. And that possibilityscares us more than the long-term alte
ative! But when youdon't slow down, when you don't stop for lunch, nor take time toexercise because you are stringing deadlines together, you runlong-term risks.
Your body is a well-tuned system. If you don't make gooddecisions on your own behalf, you can bet that it will. Do youknow anyone who had a bizarre accident, seemingly out of nowhereonly to discover that it was the best thing that happened tothem? I met a man last month that told me about an accident hehad over Labor Day weekend. He slipped and fell at a pool party,which laid him up for a bit of time due to a resulting backinjury. I asked what he learned from this experience. He saidone word, "patience." He is now more patient on the freeways,with his children and family, and with life in general.
Is there one thing you can do, just one thing that willeliminate one ounce of busyness from your life? Can you trustthe future enough to take that action? Will you any way?