Every day, many of us fall into the habit of trying to fit in with the socially acceptable expectation that being overscheduled and exhausted means that we are doing it right. We are praised for adding on more and more and our brains create an addiction to the chemicals of stress. We come to believe that we are supposed to be able to do all of the things without any help all while making it look like it’s a breeze.
When we are not busy every moment of the day, we are also pressured to feel unimportant and even lazy. We are trained into believing that we have to earn our worth and that it is tied to how much money we make, how many things we have, and how many tasks we can cram into one day without actually breaking down.
Busy is an odd status symbol. It is like fake designer clothing- it looks really good from the outside, but on the inside the structure is uneven, details are missing, and only the wearer knows that what others see is an illusion.
Yvonne Tally Breaking Up With Busy
What we do every single day actually shapes the mind, body, and life that we live in and it forms how we identify ourselves. If we are living in the daily habit of exhaustion, stress, overwhelm, and illusion, we are creating an identity of disconnection, fear, and blame as we struggle with feeling like an imposter.
Over time, we begin to experience things like insomnia, impaired concentration, increased illness, anger, disconnection, hopelessness, and loss of joy. And these are all signs of burnout.
We cannot expect to live this way on a daily basis, constantly hoping no one sees that we are hanging on by a thread and thinking that this is what life is “supposed” to be like. Our mental, physical, social, and spiritual health are all at stake.
So, what do we do? We break the trance. We actually schedule in time to do things that we enjoy simply for the sake of doing them (let’s call this play). We create night time routines, honor when we feel tired, and go to bed by 10 (let’s call this rest).
Play and rest actually help to combat the anxiety that we are trained into and help us to remember that we have worth simply because we are alive. They are essential to our overall health and they are how we come out of the attempt to simply survive and begin to thrive.
What if you ran an experiment for the next week? See how you feel when you go to bed by 10p every night. Try scheduling in time to do something you enjoy at least once in the next seven days. And start to assess if exhausted is really what you wanted to be when you grew up.
Putting yourself and your health before the long list of all of the things does not mean that you are lazy or selfish. It means that you are realigning your priorities to live the life that you want to live. That can take courage, but it is SO worth it. You are worth it.
I would be happy to chat with you about all of this. It’s what I do. So, feel free to shoot me a message.
I will be working to increase play and rest right along with you.
Chat again soon,
k