On Quieting the Inner Critic and the Need for Busyness

More aimless walks, less pounding on keyboards.

That about sums up my cat’s attitude toward leashes! Photo by Amber Kipp on Unsplash

Lately, I’ve taken to walking around aimlessly in my yard.

Seriously. I don’t even know what I’m doing. At times I find myself just standing there, holding the end of a leash that’s strapped to a cat, and wonder what the neighbors are thinking at that exact moment.

And while I may look like I’m heavily medicated and torturing a cat, I’m basically following Ferriss Bueller’s advice of stopping to look around before it all runs past in a flash of graduations, weddings, and funerals.

I’m learning that rushing into and out of things in an effort to appear super important while trying to prove myself to others that I have value isn’t working anymore. (Therapy much?)

This practice of walking aimlessly around my yard may sound utterly frightening to the “busy people” and it absolutely needles my inner critic as it lays into me for being so… irritatingly relaxed. It wants to Jason Bourne my lying-on-a-park-bench ass until I comply with its urgent need to get back to doing something it deems important and very, very busy-looking.

Who has this luxury of an aimless walk, it demands!