Mind your busy-ness
The disease of getting things done
I wake up in my apartment. It’s a November morning and the rain is falling down outside. The first thing I do is reach for my phone. The light from the phone hits my eyes. It almost hurts but after a while my eyes get used to the brightness lighting up my dark November bedroom. The raindrops are melting down like tears on the window outside. I do my usual morning scan. Facebook: three notifications and two messages. Twitter: no retweets. Instagram: two likes since yesterday. My mailbox loads and suddenly 12 new emails download.
“Urgent! We need your feedback on this”.
“Lunch meeting next week?”
“Project meeting today”
“Urgent! Sales report yesterday — decrease in sales with 22%!”
Suddenly my pulse rises. My mind starts spinning and I feel a sense of unease in my body. I recognize the sensations. It’s like a tingling and bubbly sensation from the toes all the way to by chest where it all ads up to some kind of pressure and heaviness. I hurry up from bed and eat my breakfast to start my day and get my day started as soon as possible. To get things done.
That November morning was a lot like other mornings in my life. I’d learned that you can always be on top and you can always perform. “It’s up to you and your attitude to create and do great stuff — and get them done today!” “That’s what differs you from the others — your ability to go on when shit gets tough”. “Your attitude to perform when it’s dark outside, the emails pile up and the results are decreasing”. “That’s your time to get your shit together and get things done”.
One morning was different from other mornings. It was still dark outside and like all the other mornings I was alone in my apartment. The silence was so thick that it reached inside and laid down like a grey, wet, blanket on my chest. My heart felt empty. My chest heavy. I reached for my phone and as soon as I grabbed it my throat couldn’t bear the weight anymore. Something had to come out. My eyes started watering up. The emptiness spread to my limbs. I started crying. I hadn’t cried for a couple of years and suddenly felt embarrassed that I was crying. I stood up and went to the bathroom. The apartment was still dark and completely silent and empty. I hit the lights in the bathroom. Facing me in the mirror was this guy in his mid twenties that most people thought was “successful, inspiring, brave and strong” — crying. My first instinct was to push away the negative thoughts and start thinking positive. Getting my shit together and be positive again. Get some control of my thoughts. I started doing an affirmation exercise I’d learned a couple of years earlier by some inspirational speaker. Affirming my positive sides to change my mind and get some positive thoughts, instead I cried even more. The emptiness kept growing and my chest felt like a bigger and bigger hole. I sat down by my kitchen table and the crying eased off. For one second I thought it was over and I was back on track to get this day and all my meetings started. The pressure over the chest came back. And without even noticing it I was crying again. What. The. Fuck. Is. Going. On!? That November morning didn’t end there. The crying decreased but the emptiness continued. Suddenly things that I usually thought was fun weren’t. All the energy I always heard I had had vanished. Nothing was fun and I just wanted to stay home doing nothing at all.
According to studies from 2010 more than 500.000 Swedes wake up every morning taking their anti-depressives. According to studies done in 2012 more than 100.000 youths, which is a sensational increase, eats anti-depressives between the ages of 15–35. Burnout is a state of emotional, mental, and physical exhaustion caused by excessive and prolonged stress. According to an article in Journal of Applied Psychology “the individuals who are most vulnerable to occupational burnout are ones who are strongly motivated, dedicated, and involved in the work in which they partake”. You know those ”successful, inspiring, brave and strong” individuals.
We’ve built a belief that the person that gets most done is the most valuable. We’ve adapted to a spread out view where it’s all about the individual performance and ability to get things done. We’re putting ourselves in the equation that we are what we do. We’re tricked to believe that the more you do, the more you are. We often discuss economical growth and growing our businesses, getting a raise and saving more and more money for that potential exit or take that long vacation where we just do things we love and take care of ourselves. Planning life for something that will happen later tends to always end up happening “later”.
I’m not saying you should quit your job today. Sell your company and go “and find yourself”, as if there’s something to find. I’m not saying that you should leave your banker job and become a yogi that finds his or hers inner peace on a lululemon mat for 150 bucks. I’m just saying that it’s time for us to start being more compassionate towards each other — and most importantly, to ourselves. Start treating ourselves as if we we’re the most important person on this planet. And being aware and mindful of our choices and what we fill our days, our heads and our lives with.
It starts by making conscious compassionate choices.
1 — Wake up making conscious choices
Hitting on the phone and checking all kinds of social media and emails in the morning will most likely leave you with a sense of stress. And if you say that it calms you down because you get a overlook over what’s happening — I’m saying that you just proved my point. Wake up taking five minutes where you just spend time with yourself. How are you feeling this morning? How is your breath feeling? What is your intention for the day? And like a friend of mine said he starts his day: “I always used to start by reading all my emails and got stressed — now I start the day by giving my girlfriend a kiss on the cheek, sit down on the bedroom floor and light a candle. Then I repeat the sentence: ‘today I’m going to be true to myself’ for five minutes”. Whatever makes sense for you — but be aware of how you start your day and what intention you bring into the day.
2 — Learn to focus again
In one of my posts I wrote about this generation being the most flexible, courteous, yes-saying and maybe distracted generation ever. The post was about “choosing a lot of things is like not choosing at all”. In times where things seems to be more and more impossible to plan, in business and in life, it’s probably more important having a clear intention, staying true to yourself and taking action on things that actually matter. In order to do so we need to create space in our lives and in our calendar to be able to think, reflect, learn and choose wisely. Start by giving yourself a challenge to create more space. The next ten things people invite you to — see if you can take 10 minutes to give yourself space to think about it. Ask yourself if it serves you, if you really want to attend and if it’s important that you specifically attend. Most times it could even be fun — but it’s a difference between what we sometimes want and what we sometimes need.
3 — Write
Writing is one of the most effective ways of reflecting and creating headspace connecting thoughts, feelings and experiences. Sometimes it’s hard putting a specific word on something. But writing it down could help us reflect and get distance to our thoughts and emotions. Even if it’s 5 minutes a day it will matter in the long run. Start or end your day by writing down your thoughts and what you realized during the day, what you learned about yourself and what your intention is.
Mohandes Ghandi supposedly said:
“There is more to life than increasing its speed.”
I lived most of my life up to a couple of years ago filling every last bit of my calendar avoiding the alone time because it scared the shit out of me. I hated going home at 5pm because my apartment was empty and I felt alone. Most of the things I choose to do was, hand on heart, because I hated being alone. I did everything to avoid sitting with myself and hearing whatever is going on in my head and most importantly my heart. I tried most things to “change my thoughts and choosing the positive thoughts” — until I realized thoughts are more or less impossible to control. They will appear whether I want them to or not. What I realized I could do was to choose how to react. And the more space I have in my calendar and especially in myself I realized the thoughts didn’t scare me anymore. Yes, they made me cry, feel void and feel melancholy, but they didn’t hurt me. And the more friends I became with these feelings and thoughts the more space I had to feel happiness, love and compassion.
I really want to emphasize that the beauty of creating and doing is one of the most rewarding and beautiful things we could put our time on. But I’m saying we need to start being more compassionate with our friends, our family and ourselves. They will not remember you for how much you did, but how much you made them feel.
