How often do you ask someone how they’re doing and you get the response “Busy, so busy.” Or some other favourites like “I’d love to but I’m so busy.” “Don’t know how I’m going to get through this week. I’m just so busy.” “That thing you asked me to do? Yeah, I just can’t make it. I’m so busy.”
It seems that busyness is now a badge of honour that we like to throw around. If there was a rewards program for the number of times we say we’re busy, we’d all be soaking up high ‘status’ and have enough points to fly around the world within a few months. But is this badge really serving us and is busy really what we should be striving for?
It’s not too often that I run into someone who tells me how busy they are with a big grin on their face. Usually, it comes with a slow eye roll and a mild groan under their breath. So why are we so quick to profess our busyness and what price are we paying for it?
Human Doing vs Human Being
Busyness and Our Health
In our efforts to establish our self-worth by demonstrating how ‘busy’ we are, we can fall into a couple of pitfalls along the way.
Physical Health
When our value comes from getting our tasks checked off our list, often the tasks that serve our own health don’t make it on the list – getting enough sleep, getting enough activity, preparing healthy meals, etc. This means our health ends up taking a back seat to our ‘busy status’.
Emotional Health
The constant pressure to perform can lead to an ambient stress level that also doesn’t serve us. When we don’t take time out to destress, engage in leisure activities or prioritize our relationships, the negative emotions of frustration, anger, and overwhelm can creep in, not to mention a negative perception of ourselves if we feel we’re falling short of whatever magical level of ‘busyness’ we feel we should be maintaining.
Choosing a full life vs. busyness
So, there is a price we pay a price for ‘busy’. But maybe there are things we like about our full lives. Perhaps we like to support our kids with extracurricular activities that may have us feeling like part-time Uber drivers from time to time. We like performing well at work and want to put in those extra hours to advance our careers. We want to support our community through our volunteer hours. We like to be involved at our kid’s school, volunteering to chaperone field trips or donate items to the bake sales.
How do when then reconcile the desire to do many of the things that we want in our full lives with the downsides of ‘busy’? By making choices.
But for many of us, we do have a choice. We just don’t recognize the privilege we have in being able to choose. Volunteering at school is a choice. Registering our kids for extracurricular activities is a choice. Putting in overtime so that we can pay the bills is a choice. Working extra hours for that big promotion is a choice.
Our choices come with consequences but ultimately, they are choices. Some of those choices may feel more obvious than others. Volunteering seems like a choice, but work seems like it’s not a choice. However, we could choose not to work. We could choose to not pay our bills. This is a choice we CAN make. There are just consequences that go with that choice and we may not like those consequences.
The power of choice
The important point here is that for those of us that have the privilege to choose, we are behaving as if we don’t have that choice. We are exchanging our power to choose for the status of busy. And that exchange is important for us to realize because how we think about our life impacts how we feel about our life and how we feel about our life impacts our actions.
The ‘BUSY’ thought:
Thought: “I’m sooo busy!”
Feeling: Overwhelmed, anxious, frustrated, irritated
Action: Skip the workout, grab the fast food, snap at our partner
The ‘full life’ thought:
Thought: “I’ve chosen a full life.”
Feeling: Empowered, proud, effective, autonomous
Action: Plan ahead to fit it all in, problem-solve when things go astray, ask for help when we need it.
Do you need help moving away from busy and toward a full life that you've chosen? A huge part of health coaching is managing our thoughts. Click here to sign up for a free consultation.
