too busy..

موضوع: too busy.. الإثنين فبراير 04, 2008 10:45 pm

Too Busy!
by Jacquie Hale
When I was researching “stress” for my book, a lot of people said they were stressed to the max and also too busy to read books. For that very reason, I made my book short and sweet. But ever since those interviews, I’ve been wondering about being too busy. Why do we find ourselves too busy? After all, we are not working as slaves for an inhumane master. We’re not in prison camps. We’re not being forced to labor against our will. So what gives?
We’re too busy because we choose to be. I hate to put the blame directly on the busy person! After all, isn’t it the boss who is piling on all the work or some looming project or some event that fills our hours with so many tasks? Is it some elusive bad guy, or is it me? When I worked alone on the night shift in Trumbull Hospital lab, did I choose to have the emergency room overrun by accidents at the same time a hemophiliac was having a bleeding crisis and an emergency C-section began in Labor and Delivery? No, I didn’t choose that. But if it happened every night and if I continued to work that shift alone, I was choosing to work in a chaotic, crisis-driven world. An occasional busy time does not qualify—everyone has an occasional busy time. It’s when the unusual is usual that the responsibility falls on the person who chooses to be part of it.
If people are too busy, it’s a choice. It may be because they don’t set good boundaries—people keep giving them stuff to do and they keep doing it. In that case, they are choosing to not say “No!” If they think that they’ll lose their job if they do say no, they are still choosing to be busy. If they think no one else would do the job the way they do it, they are still choosing to be busy.
Another reason people keep themselves “too busy” is they are seeking approval. They keep piling the work on themselves, hoping that just one more perfect report or fabulous design or nutritious meal will get them the recognition they long for. They don’t delegate because that would give someone else the opportunity for praise. Again, this is a condition they choose to be in.
What’s a busy person to do? The first step is to decide not to be busy. Sometimes people simply change their lives when they notice they are too busy; however, often the epiphany involves some personal tipping point where they realize that busy-ness is keeping them from enjoying life. A relationship may suffer, a career may explode, health issues might appear, something will happen that is equivalent to getting hit over the head with a two-by-four. Whether the messenger is gentle or brutal, the first step to stopping being busy is to decide to not be busy.
For some people, that’s all that’s required—just deciding. For example, setting boundaries can be easy once the decision is made. For others, the work may be deeper. If the reason they are too busy is because they are desperately seeking acknowledgement, the road to complete success will involve some deep soul searching to discover the source of their feeling they lack some essential part that everyone else has. This can be a long and painful journey or one filled with delightful discoveries involving courage and honesty. Again, it’s a choice of how to view one’s life.
Vibrant Life Activity
* One a scale of 1 – 10, how busy are you generally?
* At your best, how busy are you?
* At your worst, how busy are you?
* What is the optimum level of busy-ness for you to feel motivated but not on the edge of overwhelmed?
* What’s one thing you could do this week to move toward that level?
* What’s something you can do next week?
If you are too busy to enjoy your life fully, I strongly suggest getting help. A coach or therapist might be a good choice. If you are good at self-motivation, my book or one of the hundreds of other self-help books available might be exactly what you need. It’s imperative that you commit to and make a change before the ton of bricks comes crashing down!
© 2005, Jacqueline Hale