Life is busy. You sure don’t need a life coach to tell you that! However – there are two kinds of busy. Which one is more you?
There is active, focused, conscious busy …and there is frantic, rushing, juggling, largely unconscious busy.
The first feels energising, focused, controlled, productive. Let’s call that Purposeful Busy.
The other feels overwhelming, stressful, and out of control. That would be Stressful Busy.
Life is always going to be busy. It’s the 2020’s. That just how it is, we don’t really get to change that. What we DO get to control though is WHAT KIND of busy we are personally engaged in
BOTH are going to keep you doing stuff all day. Only one is going to not just feel good but move you nearer to where you want to go and the kind of life you want for ourselves.
We can all be busy all day and knackered at the end. That however doesn’t tell us if we have been being busy about the right things.
The defining factor is
WHAT ARE YOU GETTING BUSY ABOUT?
How much has been about obligation?
And how much about positive choice?
How much has required willpower? And how much has been breezy inspired action?
Stop. Take a minute. What ARE you filling your day with – to be so busy?!
Is it purposefully in alignment with the life you want to have for yourself a year, 3 years from now?
How much of your day is a building brick for the future, and how much is going through the motions or obligation driven?
A year from now if you want to be promoted is your busyness a small step in driving that outcome, or is it just busy work that someone else didn’t want to do that you didn’t want to say no to?
A year from now if you want to be strong and fit and in your old jeans is skipping that spin class because you were so busy a step towards that goal or a step away? What were you busy with instead?
A year from now if you want to be credit card debt-free did you take a tiny action towards that goal today? Or were you too busy to make a packed lunch and ate on the run again?
All these things are teeny tiny choices.
But that is how we get ANYWHERE! Lots of teeny tiny choices in a row.
To create anything of meaning in our life.
We have to be busy doing the right things.
Being busy per se is not enough.
The time will pass anyway.
It will get filled with tens of thousands of tiny choices anyway.
The difference between Purposeful Busy and Stressful Busy is a very clearly defined future goal, and the commitment to move towards it each day, in a tiny way – NO MATTER WHAT. Even if its inconvenient. Even if it means we let someone else down. Even if we say no to some other stuff.
When we don’t do this – it means that our priorities shift weekly, daily, hourly, depending on who needs what. That is where we are Stressful Busy. That’s why we feel like we are rushing, and juggling between everything.
Because we are.
There is a better way.
When we have a purpose and we prioritise it.
When we are Purposefully Busy we are not LESS busy.
We are just busy about the right things.
