I need to be honest: for a long time my life was desperately busy. The desperation set in after I started my business and had my daughter. I was desperate for so many things: sleep, support, more time, affection and understanding (at home and work) I was so consistently overwhelmed that I couldn’t keep up with the demands of my life; it made me dishevelled and possibly even incompressible at times.
It came on for me suddenly because having a child makes for dramatic changes in a person’s life. However, there are times in any of our lives that we get pushed to the busy zone, pedal to the metal, and have to scramble to keep up. Before we are even aware of what is happening we can find ourselves in a frenetic state of constantly chasing. It becomes a habit.
Maybe we are chasing social gatherings, work, family, recreation time, spiritual practices, or social media. We may find ourselves chasing the time it takes to eat well or the time we need connect in deeper ways with our loved ones. We could be chasing date nights or the opportunity to make more money.
My question for you is, do you feel like you have a beautifully full life or a desperately busy one? I spent years in the latter, and as a kid I recall my mother being there constantly. I began to resent myself and the constant feeling I had of not being enough. I was convinced that if I could just keep running myself ragged I would get closer to finding more ease in my life. In fact, the opposite was happening: I was getting spun out, less connected and more anxious.
I decided to make a dramatic change. I decided to change the way I viewed my days and my ‘to do’ lists. I had to find a way to slow down and lose my addiction to being anxious. This has been a process, and I want to be clear about that because any behaviour that gives us an emotional reward that drives our lives can become an addiction. We can easily become consumed with wanting to attach ourselves to things that keep us in an addictive visceral response.
My first shift was to identify my behaviour and decide that I wanted a new reality. My second shift was to immediately change my response to my days. What I mean is that I had to stop leaving my house in the morning feeling like I was already behind. I began to repeat to myself that, “I have enough time” and remind myself not to believe the inner voice that wanted me to feel stressed. I had to let that go. Every time I started to get caught up in my stress/anxious response I would catch myself, stop and breathe. I would repeat the phrase, “I have enough time” and stay in the moment until the anxiety passed.
Over the last few years of developing this practice, my life is no longer the same mess it was. I have a full life, but my life doesn’t run me. My ‘to do’ lists sometimes feel BIG but I remind myself that I have chosen them, and I question my choices. Do they fill me up? If any of them don’t, I remove them from my list. Although there are things that need to be accomplished in life, we can choose to eliminate those that do not have value or do not serve our lives in any way.
Making this choice has actually meant that I am able to see more friends and attend more social events. It means I can connect more intimately with people around me because I have more mental bandwidth to take in more relevant data, rather than filling my life with stuff that clutters my mind and my capacity to engage with the world.
Sure, at times I am still too busy to connect with friends and sometimes I get overwhelmed at work, but I don’t let those moments take over my life. I hunker down and take care of the things that need tending to and eventually I come out of it. I watch my addictive tendency to create stress. I stay mindful about how many commitments I make in my life.
I am more fully present in my life than I have ever been.
What about you? Do you feel overrun by your life? Do you feel like you have no control over it? Does your life control you? Do you look at other people and resent the way they get to live their lives?
Or do you feel content? Do you feel happiness during your days? Are you the one who leads your life and gets to make the choices?
Whether you believe it or not, you have the privilege of creating your life. So how are you going to use that privilege to serve yourself and possibly others?
With love
Noelle
P.S My 50 hour Yoga & Life Immersion starts Sept 28!
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