What is "busy" costing you? It could be effecting your personal relationships: your relationship with yourself with your business with your friends and family being "busy" is not the answer to success. Let's address the thoughts that drive us to "busy" and find other ways of success without time pressure.
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Transcript:
The cost of busy..
It’s so interesting how so many of us think about busy,
How we use it,
And how it makes us feel.
And how it makes other people feel.
You using this word, could possibly be why people aren’t reaching out to you either-
Because they don’t want to bother you,
Because we have been under this veil of “busy”
So today we are going to talk about all things busy. And make life more fun!
Hey friends, WELCome to the ADHD Boss Podcast with Ellen Argo:
And my mission is to help you make more money, with self trust and more fun, this year in your business WITH your ADHD brain. So if you are looking for ways to empower your brain, scale your business, and have more fun, please subscribe to this podcast! The cost of “busy”
When we ask a friend how have you been- busy. Is a very common answer.
So many of us wear it as a badge of honor.
Wrapped up in our worth.
We believe it, and we let it rule our present experience, our future and our pasts.
What is “being busy” costing you? What if “busy” wasn’t the way that life was meant to be? What If you could be successful and not “busy?”
What it looks like from an external prospective - when I am hiring employees and they say they are busy
It makes me feel like they aren’t committed to working with us,
That they are probably not very good at prioritizing themselves,
Or their objectives.
That they probably aren’t going to be awesome at getting the things done at work.
I do a lot of things, I have a lot of things on my calendar,
But I will always have time for supporting my friends,
And getting back to email and things when I have decided I will get back to them…
Which is not when other people think I should (as a side note, I only check my email 2x a week… because that’s what I have decided I will do, and I have a auto responder telling them that…)
Why are we choosing to be so busy ? In a recent study, 75% of men, and 25% of women chose to shock themselves instead of sit in a quiet room for 15 minutes.
Busy does not mean productive, it could mean the opposite.
I think busy is wrapped up into self worth - and a fear of boredom.
When you are able to deconstruct your schedule from your self worth -
And you are able to schedule the right amount of things on your list to support your brain, and dopamine. We can strike a great balance. …also- work life balance is in the brain my friend.
You can have the best balanced calendar in the world, and as soon as you believe you are too busy - you have decided to drink the poison of anxiety.
Defining what you need to get done today. It can be 1-3 objectives.
If I was to get absolutely nothing done today, besides these 3 things- what would it be? bringing in your core values, do these things that I want to get done align with my core values? Does it feel like the best use of my time right now? Are there other things that need to be done in the next few days? Week? That I want to be aware of? Keeping a list of the things you truly “need to do” is very helpful.
When we can look at things objectively, instead of reactively- we are able to recognize that we aren’t busy- we can plan and do exactly what we need to do.
We can work hard for however many hours we decide to,
And then when that time ends, we can move on to other things that we decide to do.
Being busy - is connection to the thought “not having enough time”
When we believe we don’t have enough time, we do things that make us believe we don’t have enough time.
We cause so much angst in those things, and we don’t even allow ourselves,
To experience our time, now.
We are leaning into the future, with resistance to what is happening in the now.
Being busy - is also something I do to avoid the present moment.
I noticed that I seem to do this dance with doing too much and doing too little
Going back and forth between “overwhelmed” and “bored” when I am feeling lots of overwhelm, it’s a great opportunity for me to pause and reflect on what it is that I am chasing- or running away from. When I am in overwhelm, there are beliefs about myself that I can learn from.
That I can understand to give myself space, instead of judgement.
When I am in overwhelm I belief in my limitations.
When I pause and recognize my overwhelm is just the awareness that I am putting so much on my plate because I believe that I need to be somewhere else to be happy, (which is so much of where my overwhelm seems to come from) I can chose to allow myself to be here, now. And the overwhelm releases. I can recognize that whatever it is that I am overwhelmed about, maybe it’s the fact that I need to hire multiple people in a certain time period, while maintaining my work schedule, creating valuable content, and my personal life. When I think about this with the mindset of “I dont have enough time” I create that in my reality- I pressurize my experience and I also limit my ability to freely and in a more fun way see how fun, and interactive it is to hiring a new person. I hold so much angst about the task at hand,
Spend so much time in overwhelm. Pushing away the thing that I have deemed that is really important to me. This is how we show up, when we believe we don’t have time.
We simply, use up our time with our overwhelm, or anxiety.
We can also use our time in excitement, and creation.
When I recognize that I am in overwhelm, especially in this instance,
I like to remember why it is that I want to spend my time or specifically-
Why it is the best use of my time to hire the perfect employees for our team.
When I ask myself a really great question like this, my mind will offer me an answer.
When I ask myself a negative question, like why is this so overwhelming, it will also give us an answer-
So be aware of what questions you are asking yourself.
When I ask myself why is it the best use of my time to hire the best employees for our team,
I get to see the excitement of meeting these people, I get to see how they continue to love on our clients, employees, how we all grow together. I get to see the bonds deepen. I connect in with people and learn about their lives, and how we can continue to support their dreams and their goals. I get to make new caring connections, even if in the meantime there are some people that aren’t the perfect fit for us.
When I remember why I love doing this- I am able to find reasons why it’s not overwhelming.
I am able to create feelings that mobilize me effortlessly to take the action that I want to take.
When I go into indeed, my job panel with this thought- ugh. I so don’t want to be doing this. I have so much I need to be doing. I don’t show up for them, I don’t even show up for my team.
I do C- work, I do the bare minimum. I don’t connect with them, I just send them a template, and I even offload the work of indeed to one of my employees. I completely disconnect, from this thing that in my deepest knowing is something that ultimately I have the best pulse on at the moment.
I don’t allow it to be fun at all from this place of overwhelming. When I am trying to avoid a task, that I have created lots of thoughts of resistance, is often when my brain offers me “I don’t have time for that”
It’s like my brains first go to - for. Nope. I dont want to.
Even if there is truly no other reason than that.
Then my brain goes in and totally justifies itself, and finds reasons why I don’ have time.
I want you to reflect back, next time you think you don’t have time- and look at the things you are doing/did.
I also want to define two different feelings that can be evoked from “I dont’ have enough time”
There is a soft, confident, and supportive side of I dont have enough time, or an essence of - “This is not something that I have decided is the best use of my time”
I want to remind you, that honoring yourself, and your schedule for yourself, and to others…
I think is critical. Allowing ourselves to say no to things, that right now when we are in a place of calmness, can reflect and see, this is not what I am choosing to be a part of right now. Doesn’t mean that we need to justify it through - I don’t have time. You can simply hold in your truth of, I am deciding not to right now, and I have my own back in my decision.
It’s so interesting, lots of times I see my friends/clients/family members/and very often myself, in our knowing that something is not important- and we give ourselves and then the out of “I don’t have time”
But then we start to buy into this thought- which comes from a knowing, and a softness for what we want right now, and we start to turn it against us.
We start to believe that we dont’ have time.
This is why I want us to step into our truth- and just be direct and say,
That is not a focus of mine right now.
Stop saying, and believing you don’t have time.
It is not helpful for you.
We all have the same amount of time in a day,
Some of us chose to do a lot,
Some of us chose to do less,
Neither is right or wrong.
But time doesn’t need to be a source of contention,
I like time to be my teacher.
When I realize I am feeling “time pressure”
I know every time for myself,
It is me feeling like there is better than here.
Believing that I need to get somewhere to be happy.
That I need to be creating something new to be happy.
Constantly in this chasing game.
And this is where I take it back to the thought I shared in the opening,
We are in the future, resisting the present moment.
But the only place we have control, is right here and right now.
When we are constantly chasing from a negative thought pattern,
That’s what our future will look like.
It’s so interesting, that when we are in the flow state,
Or when we are in the here and now- there is no time pressure.
It’s all so easy.
We just allow everything.
It’s so fun, so much wisdom flows to us, and through us.
There isn’t pressure to be anywhere, create anything.
It is the ultimate timelessness.
I like to joke also,
And say that if you feel like time is flying to fast hold a plank,
Or microwave some food for a few minutes.
This is such an interesting realization of how much time we really do have.
Depending on what you are paying attention to, time can go fast, or it can go slow.
Time can be pleasurable, or it can be miserable.
But there is only one thing that determines that.
The object of your minds attention.
When your muscles are quivering and wanting to give up, every second feels like an eternity.
When you are thinking really anxious thoughts about your next task,
Or not believing in yoru ability to do it well,
This is going to cause a very negative experience during that time.
When you are on vacation, it’s the same amount of time, but it goes so fast because you are enjoying it.
You have a positive object of attention.
When you are sad, although it is hours, it feels like an eternity.
Time is an illusion. We can speed it up, and slow it down, by the quality of our thoughts.
I have lived 8 years in a wonderful dream of my business, still getting thigns done - but joyfully (50% of the time) but also experiencing the hardest hard ships I have ever experienced.
I want to bring this back to, we have time.
The only reason we believe we don have time,
Is because - our brain simply doesn’t want to do it.
We can ask ourselves, is this something that I really need to do? If this is something I decided is important - and this is something that us ADHDers do tend to struggle with, defining importance for tasks at hand,
Write it down in your reminders list.
Knowing that you have a system to remind you that you can do it.
But you don’t need to do it right now.
When we can understand that we can do it later-
We have a resource that supports us, and understand that our mind really feels time pressure as a means to not forgetting and letting people down.
As a response to the “now or not now” of our minds.
We can chose to do, in our time, what supports us.
If we have decided that this is something that is truly important for us to do right now,
And not later,
Or a great idea to add to the list of ideas,
Then make that decision.
I decided that this is the best use of my time right now.
I use this mantra a lot.
My brain likes to offer me drama,
And then I change the title even in my calendar to-
The best use of my time is to work at the studio today.
I state my decision, and make it readily available for me to be reminded of my decision in my calendar.
When I make decisions, and state them- it makes it easy for me to take powerful action.
I don’t need to waste time and energy waffling back and forth.
I take action, on my decision. Because I have already taken the time I need to decide if I want to or not.
I can’t tell you how many years I have probably wasted on simply re-deciding something.
(This is another reason I changed my event titles to my decisions, and made a list of my decisions)
It keeps the drama at bay…some of the time.
But hey- I am still a human.
All of this being said, remember. It’s not goign to be perfect.
You will have resistance.
That’s just how it goes.
Just re-remember. Re-decide. this is the best use of my time right now.
When I think- taxes are the best use of my time, it feels true.
I am able to do something that truly does not make any sense to me after 8 years of entrepreneurship,
And step into the reality of, I am going to figure out what steps I need to do to get the correct information to the people that know what they are doing. What steps do I need to do today to get this task complete? This is all factual. I have looked into the face at the task at hand, and without drama found an outline of what I need to do. I write it down, and I do that thing. When I am really feeling on top of it, I will put all my tasks that I need to do in the notes section in my event title on my icalendar. For ongoing tasks, I even put it on repeat for the next year, so without thought- I can create a routine that supports my future self.
All of this is available to the mind, when we aren’t believing that “we don’t know how,” or “we don’t have time”
When I am experiencing time pressure I wont be able to access the ability to see the next steps of what needs to be done, even if I already have done it before.
Time is one of the greatest places of overwhelm.
Especially for ADHDers that experience time differently
I want to walk you through a meditation that really helps me-
Describe the feeling you have in your body - as if you were describing it to an alien - where in your body do you feel it, does it have a color, texture, is it moving, still, what is the shape of it, is it hard or soft?
Name the emotion that feels like exemplifies it
Breathe with it, feeling those sensations
This is what allowing your emotion looks like, allowing only happens in the now. resistance is time pressure. Allowing, is simply allowing- when you are in a space of allowing, you are able to reflect in with your values, your time, what your bodies energy is like. Our worthiness is not on the line here.
I notice that when I am feeling bored is another time that I will create busy work.
So I push myself into more and more busy thigns, because I am running away from the feeling of boredom.
Do you notice that you do this? I wonder how many entrepreneurs use this as a source to hyper fixate on work,
They are so afraid of the emotion of boredom, running away from this emotion that is powerless without their thoughts.
What is so scary about time? What is so scary about boredom? dopamine and stimulation come to mind, when understanding the underworking of the brain, and especially adhd brains.
Our brains are dopamine seeking machines!
Boredom does not stimulate the brain, nor does it produce dopamine release.
So of course, boredom feels like a terrorist to the adhd brain.
This allows me to have compassion, and allow space for boredom- or “seemingly less productive tasks”
Where I meditate - I still am results focused…because that’s just the way I am.
But when we can know that our brains are seeking dopamine,
We can know plan things outside of work that spark dopamine.
We can chose other things, that we can decide are less “busy”
Or, there are times also where we are working, but not coming from “busy” energy.
Another point I want to revisit-
Your worth is not dependent upon how much you do.
Your worth is not dependent upon how much you know.
Your worth is here - when you are bored.
When you did nothing.
Remember those days when you were sick, and you produced nothing-
And you were totally justified in not working.
You weren’t beating yourself up about it, and just allowing yourself to have 0 productivity.
To relax into what is happening.
You didn’t make it mean that you were never goign to be successful,
You didn’t make it mean that you were lazy,
You simply made it mean that your body needed rest to recover.
What if we also allowed this into our lives.
When we are realizing we are taking action to stimulate our brains through a dopamine release,
We can choose to stimulate our brain through deliberate rest and recovery.
This also brings me to something that a few of my clients have mentioned -
I am afraid that if I slow down, I will never get started again.
So they are taking so much action - from fear.
All of it. how fun is that?
Allow yourself to know you have your back.
Why do you love working?
How many times have you stopped working and gone back, even more motivated?
Hopefully, you stop working to sleep, and you stop working to go on vacation every once in a while.
Your business isn’t falling flat.
But your brain when thinking fearful thoughts, will give you more fearful thoughts.
We can relax into the trust that we know for ourselves,
Once we realize what we are doing. Once we realize that what we are doing is not serving us, we get to stop, take a few breaths.
feel the feelings in our body, describe the emotion we are feeling.
This allows us to directly bring us into the present moment where we get to decide HOW we want to spend our time, in what emotion do we want to continue to live? Then we can make moves for the next thing. As far as time is concerned I like to think these thoughts; - I have the perfect amount of time
When I connect in with my core values, and my dreams I know exactly what is the best use of my time
I have systems that support me
When I recognize negative emotions, is when I bring myself into my allowing meditation
In my allowing, and knowing that everything will be perfect, I allow more knowing and more perfection
I am right where I need to be
I have everything that I need to be successful and feel successful, here and now
How I get to my ultimate goal is so much easier than I can even imagine, now.
There is no need to rush.
There is so much more beauty in this journey than I could ever know ahead of time. Or “figure out”
What are your mantras that you think about time,
What emotion do you feel when you think about time? we can use the positives and the negatives as a way to cultivate awareness, more often.
If you identify with overwhelm with time- you can use the feeling overwhelm to trigger your awareness that you are thinking unsupportive thoughts about time.
Which gives you space to decide how you want to continue to think about time.
If you identify the feeling of anxiety with time- you can use anxiety as your red flag to bring awareness to your thoughts, and knowing that time is one of those common triggers that cause that emotion.
90% of our thoughts are repetitive. When we can understand our common thoughts & beliefs,
We can question them, decide if they are serving us, and allow life to be so much more fun… at least some of the time. :P
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