The Real Reason You're So Busy (It's Not What You Think)

Why are you so busy?  

No really...what is it that has you feeling so busy?

I've got a bold claim to share with you as to why I think you're so busy...and it's not because you're not "managing your time" well.  It's much deeper than that.

As you become more aware of what's really causing you to feel busy, you can choose to change what's no longer serving you so that you can get more done, with less stress, and have more energy to do more of what you love to do!

In this video, we'll explore why busyness is so pervasive in our culture today.

As you increase your awareness on this topic you'll prove to yourself that you're not as busy as you think you are...and a lot can change really fast!

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The Real Reason You're So Busy (It's Not What You Think)

Transcript - May 21, 2020

I think I know the real reason you're busy and it's not what you think it is.

My name is Zach. I'm a performance and leadership coach with Create Purpose. I work with entrepreneurial leaders, leaders who are building something, whether it's a business, a team, a career, they deeply desire to build towards a vision.

They care deeply about the impact they not only make on their own lives but the lives of all those that they lead. That's who I work with. And I help them get more of what they want from their business, from their teams, and from their lives.

Today, we're talking about why you're so busy. We all know the feeling of being busy. In fact, we're all busier than we've ever been in our lives.

We have more reasons today to be busy than ever before.

The email on our cell phones, we bring our work home with us. We have Wi-Fi in our cars now! It's not only that...it's text messages, Slack, and Teams to keep up with. We have meetings and due dates and customers all over the planet.

The pace of life is not slowing down. It's speeding up. Every year, we get busier, and it's exhausting.

We wish we were less busy.

You're listening to this probably because you feel busy. Maybe at times, you feel burnout, you feel overwhelmed.

If you could be less busy it'd be great! I'm sure you would love to hear how you can be less busy.

But I think we first need to address why is it that we feel so busy in the first place? Why does this keep happening?

The real reason you're so busy isn't what you think it is. It's none of those things I just mentioned.

Yeah, those things add to the busyness if we allow them to, but I want to highlight something that I think really is at root here of why you feel so busy.

And that is...we're afraid of what it would mean if we weren't busy--what it would say about you if you weren't busy. Let me say that again. Let me pause and let that sink in.

We all can easily establish a habit of being busy. Because we're afraid of what it means. What it would say about us if we were to not be busy. There is safety in being busy.

Busyness allows you to feel safe--it just does!

It allows you to feel safe in knowing you're working hard, you're doing your best, you're doing everything you possibly can to fulfill your role in the business, and that means you're on 24/7. You're responding to every email within the hour, you don't let any ball drop. You're involved in every detail because the stakes are higher than they've ever been.

For you to feel good about any situation, you got to be on and you got to be in it. You must be working your tail off because there's safety in that.

What would it mean to you if you were not to work hard?

If we didn't work hard, there's a belief that we would then be lazy. This belief is broken because I'm not even certain that working hard is the answer!

Working less certainly won't say that you're lazy. But because we're fearful of being lazy or being a failure in general, I think that is what drives us to be busy. We're afraid that we'll fail!

So we cannot take our foot off the gas for one second because if we did, that would be enough for us to lose it all. Implicit in all of this is, you're busy because you're choosing to be busy.

You're busy because it allows you to feel safe.

I'm just curious, how true is that for you?

Have you ever not been busy?

I have, in fact, during this pandemic, there have been times I've been at home, busy in different ways, but maybe less busy in the areas I'm used to.

The second that I became aware of the fact that I'm not working as hard as I once did, there's this tinge of anxiety that would come up. Like what am I doing? I better get it together!

I pause to become aware. Everything just changed. EVERYTHING just changed. And so I need to give myself enough grace to reposition myself and hit the pause button.

But you know what, when we're busy, we don't allow ourselves to hit the pause button. We don't allow ourselves to re-center, reflect, re-energize, recharge, so that we can get moving again.

We don't do any of that. We just keep going. We're like a hamster running on the wheel.

The thing about that...a very wise person told me once (because I felt like a hamster on the wheel) that the wheel doesn't have a motor.

The hamster controls the speed of the wheel. The hamster can choose to step off the wheel.

So that's what I want to bring to light here is what choices are you making here that's causing you to be busy?

And I want to throw something else out for you to think about: if you weren't busy, let's just pretend...

Let's pretend you weren't busy and you also knew that everything would be okay.

So you're not busy, and you would just know a matter of factly it'll all be fine. Think to yourself I won't fail, we'll still hit our goals, it's going to be fine.

If that was the case, what would you then be doing, if you weren't busy?

How would you then be spending that time?

What would you be doing differently?

I literally want you to ask that question and answer that question right now...if you weren't busy, and you knew everything was okay and would be okay what would you choose to be doing differently right now?

Where would you be spending more of your time? Might it be more time with family, more time with your kids, more time getting healthy, staying active, or just choosing to have more funt?

...So I have a personal challenge for you, now that you have that clear in your mind...for the next week, I want you to pull up your calendar right now and schedule two hours to do the thing that you just came up within your mind's eye...whether it's spending time with kids, your children, get more active, get more healthy.

Schedule two hours, this next week, put it in your calendar now!

...If you can't get two hours on the same day, cool, then spread it out over five to seven days, but put two hours in your calendar and do it for a week.

Because I'm pretty certain that not being busy, being less busy for a week is something you can live with.

I want you to try this! At the end of the experience, I want you to pause and just think about how it...?

And then look around...Is everything okay?

If that served you, then do it again and again and again!

Maybe instead of two hours, turn it into four or five hours. Really lean into what you think is possible and lean into the limiting beliefs you have about work.

As I work with clients on a private coaching basis there's oftentimes inner beliefs, limiting beliefs, that we believe, we hold dear to us, that until we let go of them, we can't have the life that we want.

We can't create the business that we want. Because if you constantly believe that you have to work your tail end off to be successful, well then what does that mean for you as a leader when you start needing to start shifting more into strategy and thinking about the future and working with people and leading and influencing--it's a whole different game!

You have to become aware of the rules that you've created for yourself that no longer serve you. Adopt some new rules, some new beliefs that are going to better serve you and sustain you, as a leader, so that you can create those results that you desire.

I hope you enjoyed this training.

I'll be coming back to you next week.

If you follow me on LinkedIn, Instagram, or Facebook...every week, I try to do a new training video like this just from things that are hitting true with me.

Oftentimes, these are things that I'm wrestling with, and these videos, these vlogs are reminders to myself as much as they are to you that we can choose how we live our lives.

Things are the way they are for a reason and more often than not, it's in how we're seeing things, and when we change our relationship with everything changes.

Our choices create our experience of reality.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai