“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone,” Blaise Pascal.
I want to invite you to do less. Why? Because it’s good for you, good for your body, your emotions and your soul.
But doing less won’t be easy. Being busy is seductive. It can puff us up and make us feel important. And give our lives a sense of purpose. But will it make us happy in our innermost places? Not so much.
Lately, I’ve been experimenting with doing less. I remind myself to take what I call “Being Breaks” a few times a day and consciously choose to put things off to another time if I can. Other than 3-4 hours of coaching people and related work around that, I try not to book stuff.
Of course, my mind continues to urge me to do things: laundry, a phone call to someone, grocery shopping, but I found the consequences of putting things off not half as dire as I’d imagined.
As I do less, I’m realizing that most of the impulses I feel to do things do not come from the activity itself, but from a compulsion to be in action. It’s almost like an addiction. Maybe it is. Tony Robbins always talks about the importance of taking “massive action” – but even though I agree that there are certainly times to be busy, in my opinion, we’ve taken things too far. As a culture, we are running ourselves ragged. We need more rest.
Speaking of rest, we seem to have relegated rest to sleep time only, but rest is hugely important to do throughout the day. How many of us work as we eat lunch, watch the news as we have dinner, listen to an audio or podcast when we go for a walk or exercise. We are constantly “on”. The only time a lot of people turn off is when their heads hit the pillow. No wonder they can’t sleep.
So, I’m letting myself be “off” more of the time and give myself a Being Break. Often I just sit. I don’t think. Or meditate. I just let my mind wander and hang out with life.
I was doing this earlier today and as I did, I noticed something outside my window. There was red haze of something on the maple tree branches. As I really looked, I noticed that the haze was really thousands of tiny little red flowers unfurling. They looked very delicate and precious.
The crazy thing is that this was the first time I’d actually seen beyond the red fuzz to the beautiful flowers. They made me feel a deep sense of the miraculous. Something Nature often does. I’m so glad I didn’t miss it.
Would you like to try giving yourself some Being Breaks this week? First, put off some of the things on your turgid To-Do list, then a few times a day, just do nothing for one minute or several. Breathe. Let your mind wander. Hang out in the present moment.
Notice how it feels to just BE. For most of us, it’s calming and grounding and easing to our minds and bodies. It helps us to trust. To not fear. And what’s FEAR but “Forgetting that Everything is All Right”. In the depths of our Beingness we just know that.
Here’s a video of Eckhart Tolle talking about how to think less that I think you might find helpful. And you know me, there’s nothing I like better than being helpful to YOU, my loyal subscribers.
Your biggest fan,
Karen
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