Above photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash
How many time have you said to a friend, family member or professor, "I am so busy" and follow that up with "and that's why I was not able to get that thing done on time." Or, "I am so busy and I don't have time to do ____________"--fill in that blank with something that is really important to you. This week's Well-Being Wednesday tip follows up on last week's "how to not give a f*ck" segment asking you to think about busyness and it's role in your life and how it fits into our culture.
In her book, Daring Greatly, Dr. Brene Brown writes, "We are a culture of people who’ve bought into the idea that if we stay busy enough, the truth of our lives won’t catch up with us." I would add to Dr. Brown's idea here and say that for many of us being busy has become a status and badge of honor that reflects the American cultural emphasis on doing rather than being. To help us all think about busyness, I have included below a TEDx talk by Lexie Harvey who speaks about "The Busy Identity." Ms. Harvey not only offers terrific words of wisdom but she does so from the vantage point of an undergraduate student (when recorded in 2016) at Furman University.
I also recommend a piece published on verywellmind.com titled, "How the Glorification of Busyness Impacts our Well-Being," which you can access by clicking on this hyperlinked text.
As you think about what being busy means to you, how it defines you, think about whether you are okay with the role busyness plays in your life. If not, go back to last week's segment in which I focused on Sarah Knight's message about giving fewer f*cks and how to develop a f*ck budget that helps you to allocate your time, energy and money toward those things that matter the most to you.