Is busyness out of control?
It seems that busyness is a pandemic of the modern world. People are constantly busy, and with it, they’re feeling overloaded and stressed.
The classic greet nowadays seems to be “How are you? Are you busy?” - the implication being that if you’re busy, then things are good. But it seems to me to be the opposite!
Now I do understand, there is a correlation between being busy and making money. And making enough money to live is of course important. But our habitual way of busy living is out of control, for sure.
Busyness is a disease that traps people into an unfulfilling life.
And in the western world, the approach to Christmas seems to exacerbate the problem. A limited amount of time, perhaps more social activities than usual, Xmas preparations to do, and work commitments to complete.
There’s two aspects I’d like to explore in this post:
Busyness comes from a misunderstanding
There’s a difference between busyness and busy-mindedness
1. Busyness comes from a misunderstanding
Busyness is taking too many things on. So why are we taking on so much?
It originates from our deep-rooted thinking about security, money and self-worth. As we move from childhood to adulthood, the ego has three basic fears driven by insecurity (as “highlighted in Richard Barrett’s work). The fears are: “will I have enough?”; ”am I loved enough?”, and “am I good enough?”.
The misunderstanding is - we have to be enough in these three areas, to be happy, to avoid suffering. So we think that the answer is working hard, achieving lots, getting promoted and making money. We get on the fast train, we relentlessly run on the hamster wheel, we move quicker and quicker in an attempt to be ‘enough’.
We end up 'busy' - busy with our activity and busy in our mind.
And even if we do achieve success and wealth, we often don't find happiness. We've programmed ourselves deep within the cells of our body to be busy. So if we’re not busy, we don’t know what to do with ourselves!
The misunderstanding is about where happiness & peace of mind come from. Happiness is an inner journey, an inner momentary state. It doesn’t come from the outside. It doesn’t come from what you have or what you achieve.
And when we deeply realise this, we can live an entirely different life. We can begin the journey of being purpose-led and inner-guided.
2. There’s a difference between busyness and busy-mindedness
So what’s the difference?
Busyness is doing lots of things. Busy-mindedness is the activity in our minds.
It is possible to be busy and yet calm. It’s also possible to not be busy, but to still be very busy-minded.
The most important element then is our mind. We need to learn to shift our relationship to our thinking. Be less caught up in our personal mind stories. Make less of a drama of what’s happening. Breathe. Meditate. Let thoughts pass by. Accept all of life surprises, not be thrown by them.
[our Quality of Mind programmes are ideal for learning more about this]
And Xmas approaches, I invite you to try this on. There’s two ways of dealing with the run-up to Xmas - a dramatic stressful approach or taking it all in your stride, trusting in the natural rhythm of life, trusting that you’ll work it all out, and somehow you’ll make it to Xmas day for another year.
If you enjoyed this post, you might also like to watch Martin’s 4-min video on “Quietening a Noisy Mind”..
