,How are you?, – ,Good, but busy., – ,I haven’t seen you in a long time?, – Yes, but I’m also so busy. Busy, busy, busy… We’re all busy. Really busy. We are all so busy that it is slowly becoming part of it. It seems to be fashionable. So watch out, if you’re not busy you won’t fit in these days. Then there must be something wrong with you?!
Too busy
Maybe we should stop using ‘I’m too busy’ as a reason to stop paying attention to each other. The days just follow each other without having time to take a moment of rest and pay attention to ourselves and the people around us. We snap at each other because we are too stressed and have so many things to do. But do we really have to do so much? If we take a good look at ourselves and think very consciously, is everything we think we ‘should’ do really that important?
Being successful in Western society
We live in a society where career and success are important criteria and by which you as a person are judged. When are you successful? In most cases, someone is considered successful if he or she has a good job with a lot of prestige and a big salary. But is it all worth the stress? Many new diseases, such as burnout and RSI, have arisen as a result. Depression and diseases such as chronic fatigue syndrome seem to be increasing in society due to this trend. Certain forms of cancer are also seen as diseases resulting from stress. The medical world is increasingly conducting research into the relationship between our mental well-being and our physical health status. And there is more and more evidence that there is a clear relationship between this.
We have the idea that we should do what others expect of us. But what do we want? We can only make someone else happy if we are happy ourselves. Many people are mistaken about that. Because we pay too little attention to what we really want to do with our lives, we become too far removed from our own nature and we forget to listen to our body and our heart. And that results in a dissatisfied feeling. How often do you hear people say; When I retire I am going to do this and that to make my dream come true, when I have completed this job I am really going to do what I want to do, if I do. Why not now?
Taking risks
Many people are afraid to take risks. But what are they afraid of? They are afraid of failure, what other people will think of them and afraid of losing their financial security. And that’s why we rush on to get that higher position and that salary increase, because then we’ll have made it. This initially seems like a good method to avoid having time to really think about what we are doing. But dissatisfaction will build up inside us and that dissatisfaction must find a way out.
Small solutions for big problems
This does not mean that everyone has to quit their job en masse to be happy or to emigrate to a distant and exotic country. But there are small things one can do every day to live more consciously. Stop using that excuse that you are ‘too busy’ and find out what the real reason is why you can’t meet up with someone and express it. Just go to the pub with a friend on a weekday, even if you are tired. You will see that this actually gives you more energy. Schedule rest points every day; spend an hour just paying attention to the children and not to the e-mail or the dirty dishes in the background. Or agree with yourself to walk for an hour every day. This is the ultimate way to release all the stress and get your mind fresh again. Many people swear by meditating for 10 minutes every day. Just ‘be’ in the here and now and let your thoughts go and drift away. A moment of total relaxation. Dare to pause every now and then and check whether you are really doing what your heart lies in. Only then can you live in balance with yourself and you don’t have to keep saying; I am too busy!