Too Busy for Your Own Good (14 page)

On your path to busyness, you decided that doing for others was the top priority and doing for yourself was less important. Or you got so enamored with the praise and rewards
for getting things done that you pushed your own needs away. Somewhere along the line, requirements for your body and the desires of your heart became unimportant, irrelevant, or insignificant.

If you're going to take the journey away from busyness, you'll have to get over the guilt of making yourself a priority; you must give yourself permission to structure your life around de-busifying. Examining and adjusting your people-pleasing habits is not a revival of a “me movement,” but rather a return to a centered and balanced lifestyle.

Decide you deserve it. If you don't, your efforts in life will continue yielding negative returns. Imagine your energy as an account that you've been withdrawing from. If you don't take time for yourself, you'll become emotionally and physically bankrupt. Consider these scenarios:

One minute spent refusing an errand necessitated by someone else's forgetfulness could yield thirty minutes to read your favorite magazine.

The five-minute first aid outlined in
Chapter 3
might relax you into solving a baffling problem.

Thirty minutes planning your meals yields better meals that boost your immune system and a less hectic dinnertime.

One hour walking and gabbing with a dear friend yields endorphins that improve your attitude with a difficult in-law.

One cell-phone-free day of being physically active with your children yields a restful night's sleep.

A one-week vacation yields renewed energy to finish a yearlong project with creativity and pizzazz and erases the stress lines from your face.

Join the de-busifying movement. Start building up your energy account now by making deposits in it so you can get it working for you later.

An ancient legend says that Hercules was irritated by a strange-looking animal that blocked his path in a threatening manner. Hercules struck it with his club in anger. As he went on his way, he encountered the same creature again several times, and in each instance, the beast grew larger and more fearsome than before. At last, a heavenly messenger appeared and warned Hercules to stop his furious assaults, saying, “The monster is Strife, and you are stirring it up. Just let it alone, and it will shrivel and cease to trouble you.”

When you see Strife in your path, you can change your perspective and look at it as a good thing. It's a change for the positive, because making a choice increases your personal power and reduces Strife's effect on you. The sooner you identify your problem and make a choice about how to deal with it, the more control you'll have.

These are your basic choices when you are problem solving:

You can tolerate the situation. (a.k.a. making do, wishful thinking, suffering in silence, or complaining to anyone who'll listen)

You can remove yourself from the situation. (a.k.a. quitting the job, leaving the committee, hanging up the phone, deleting the message, or going to your mental quiet place)

You can change the situation.
Yes, you can!
(a.k.a. stand up to the bully, change your response to the complainer, refuse to accept more tasks, change your behavior, renegotiate the agreement)

When you know your weaknesses, hot buttons, and your personal communication style, you can get back your power and internal peace. What seems like the best outcome for
you
?

When you travel to a foreign country, you need permission for entry. This official stamp in your passport granting entry for a specific purpose and a finite amount of time is known as a visa. Before you enter the strange and unfamiliar country where you decrease (or eliminate) your busyness, you need a different kind of visa. It's valid whenever and wherever you need to start decreasing your “busy”—and for as long as you need it.

Use this VISA when you begin your journey. I know that you are too busy to learn complex formulas, so I'm going to make it simple and easy to begin the process of debusifying your life.

V Visualize
clearly a time in your life when you were happy or content. The goal is to clearly see in your mind's eye where you were physically, mentally, and emotionally and what you were thinking, feeling, and experiencing. It's important to involve as many of your senses as possible so that you make this state of being freely and easily accessible. What do you see? Who is with you? What does your body feel like? If this is difficult, you can picture someone who represents what you want or whom you want
to emulate. This image or feeling becomes the touchstone of your journey; the replication of that contentment is what you're going for when you de-busify.

I Investigate
your busyness with a bright light. Take a truthful look at the people and activities that either contribute to or contaminate your life. Contaminators could be high-maintenance pals at work, high-drama friends, neighbors who seem unwilling or unable to honor boundaries, volunteering too much for extra credit, and taking on others' problems. Contributors might be the friend who is a shining example of how you want to handle your family, a mentor who freely helps you through perplexing work situations, the hobby that is energizing to you, or the foundation for a noble cause.