Are you busy? Yeah, me too…

Hi. Are you busy? I am. It’s actually 9:30pm on Monday night, and I’m hoping to go to bed soon. But, because I’ve been so busy today, I probably won’t get to sleep at the time that I really want and need to go to sleep. And I just remembered that I needed to write and schedule a blog post for you to read this morning. Why? Honestly just because I enjoy writing and hope to encourage at least one person! That would be a success. But I’m busy. So busy that sometimes I forget. Sometimes little obnoxious things take the place of what I should be doing because I was too busy to work ahead or too busy to work on a certain something and I got behind and now have to rush to finish it when I should be doing something else.

Ever been here? Ever been too busy that you didn’t know what to do?

I feel like almost every conversation I have with someone, when I ask how they are doing, or when they ask how I am doing, the response goes a little something like this:

I’m good…just busy!

Or maybe it’s a little more like this:

Things are going pretty well. Just super busy.

Or:

I’m alright, just tired. I’m really busy right now.

Does the busy-ness ever end? When? How can it stop?

Our society trains us to be busy. It trains us to pile more on our plates than we can handle. And it’s killing us. Slowly but certainly it is causing us to become more anxious and more tired, less present where we are, and less connected with the people around us. There’s this never-ending need and desire to be productive, to do a little more, to make the most of every minute and fill every spare second we have with SOMETHING.

I want to challenge you today to STOP. Stop what you are doing. Turn the volume off your phone and turn the vibrate off too (or, if you’re really daring, turn your phone off for a few minutes). Turn off the computer, the music, the podcast, the book. Put it all down, close your eyes, and just listen.

Slow your breathing, clear your mind, and just spend a few moments in silence. It’ll do something to you.

Then, later on today, or tomorrow, stop, slow down, and have a face-to-face, eye-to-eye conversation with someone and ask them how they are doing. And then ask them again, how are they really doing. I bet something out of the ordinary happens. I almost guarantee it.