Busyness is Not a Long-Term Health Plan
Author: Joan Friedlander

"I'm really busy right now, but it's a good busy." I heard these exact words quite a few times the first few weeks of the year. Every time I heard someone say it, it made me wonder what that really means. When I heard it from one person after another, I became quite curious. Although I knew that I was in a transition mode, and that I was happy about being less than busy, it still caused me to feel twinges of concern. I actually had moments when I became concerned about my lack of busyness - was even a little envious - and also wondered why so many people were saying the same exact thing. What did this mean?

In divine order, I was given a chance to experience busyness first hand during the first couple of weeks in February. Truthfully, I didn't like it. I'm pretty sure my busyness wasn't a "good busy," as I gather "good busy" means that it's accompanied by lots of money. Is it because I was busy doing things I didn't want to spend time doing, or spending time on things that no longer suited my purpose and my goals? Or, am I the kind of person who doesn't thrive on busyness, no matter how good it may be?

Last Wednesday I decided I'd had enough. I noticed I was having a hard time sleeping and that I was going to bed later and later. On many nights I wasn't fully present during family time (I was still working in my head even when I "stopped"), and it was beginning to take a toll on my health.

On this important Wednesday I decided that if I was unhappy about my stretched schedule, then I was the one person who could do something about it. First, I had to determine the sudden source of my busyness. Then I had to make decisions about my priorities, including what I was spending time on that wasn't serving me. I chose to let go of some pretty interesting things, and recognized the need to make more time for others.

This is not necessarily an easy thing to do, but I knew it was important. As someone who needs to manage my level of stress in order to stay healthy, it was critical. I think we all need to monitor our busyness more than we usually do, but someone who has a physical challenge, one that has caused weakness in their body system, really needs to do this. Either way, for most people, busyness is not a long-term health plan.

Our most important business asset is our body

When we are in business for ourselves, we pay a lot of attention to our assets and our goals, but I think we can easily forget that our most important asset is our body! We cannot do our work and fulfill our mission if our body can't support us. Many of us left the corporate world because we had little room to honor our personal needs, and now we're doing the same thing to ourselves. As they say, wherever you go, there you are.

In today's busy world, self-care habits are the first to go. Whenever I work with an entrepreneur who is attempting to bring more order to their life - the very person that's supposed to have the most ability to choose how they spend their time - exercise and self-care routines are the most frequently named missing practices. Next come consistent time off in the evenings and on weekends.

The role of adrenaline

Adrenaline is very misleading. It is a chemical produced by your adrenal glands that fools you into thinking you have plenty of energy. It is one of two chemicals released by the glands in your body (cortisol is the other one) when you get into those crunchy deadline situations. It's the chemical that has you say, "I do my best work under pressure." It's also detrimental to your health in long-term doses and adrenaline production is a symptom of busyness.

Not everyone reacts the same way to stress (and different people respond differently to different kinds of stress - the filters are individual), but if you are reading this and experiencing a nagging feeling, perhaps it's because your body wisdom is sending you messages. When I did some research for this article, I searched through Google.com using the following 3 words: adrenaline health problems. I wanted to make sure I had my facts straight about adrenaline. All links and articles I pulled up on the first 2 pages were discussions about stress in which adrenaline and cortisol were mentioned.

Making Changes

No, it's not easy to change your habits, to slow down, or to let go of projects that don't truly serve your purpose. In addition, without adrenaline pumping through you, you may experience a temporary loss of creativity and drive. And that possibility scares us more than the long-term alternative! But when you don't slow down, when you don't stop for lunch, nor take time to exercise because you are stringing deadlines together, you run long-term risks.

Your body is a well-tuned system. If you don't make good decisions on your own behalf, you can bet that it will. Do you know anyone who had a bizarre accident, seemingly out of nowhere only to discover that it was the best thing that happened to them? I met a man last month that told me about an accident he had over Labor Day weekend. He slipped and fell at a pool party, which laid him up for a bit of time due to a resulting back injury. I asked what he learned from this experience. He said one word, "patience." He is now more patient on the freeways, with his children and family, and with life in general.

Is there one thing you can do, just one thing that will eliminate one ounce of busyness from your life? Can you trust the future enough to take that action? Will you any way?






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Joan Friedlander is an Entrepreneur's Success Coach. Her national coaching company, Lifework Business Partners, provides services, programs and products for entrepreneurs who have strong personal values and are committed to a high level of success and professionalism in their business. You can expect increased revenue, an improved quality of life, and an overall increase in confidence and business know-how within 3-6 months. Click on the this link to find out more http://www.lifeworkpartners.com

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