In this episode, we consider the cost of busyness and the importance of slowing down. Your host, Chelsia Van Hierden, talks about the tendency of perfectionists, high achievers, entrepreneurs, students, and mothers, to constantly add more to their lives, all why trying to optimize every second to compensate for wildly busy schedules. The reason we do this is because we live in a society that glorifies busyness and views worth as contingent upon work. But this constant busyness isn't doing us any favours, and is actually detrimental to many areas of our lives. The solution, Chelsia suggests, is to be courageous enough to slow down. By taking simple steps, we can open up time in our schedules and in our lives to live slower—and, as a result—to live richer.
Quotes:
"Explicitly or implicitly, we use our busyness as a measurement of personal value. To be busy implies that we are successful, respectable. It has become a modern status symbol. Our societal assumption is that your worth is contingent upon your work."
"Based on the data, we’re working more, sleeping less, enduring more stress, taking less time off. We spend more time alone, and less time connecting others. We’re more exhausted, more anxious, and less fulfilled. "
"When you slow down, you increase the space in your mind for non-busy work—for exploration, creativity, and reflection. You’ll experience less stress and anxiety, and more peace and clarity."
"And by slowing down, you’ll discover that the self development you may have been fiercely striving towards actually needed some space to germinate. We grow in the spaces and in the silences. "
"[T]here’s such a thing as saying 'yes' too often, and if left unchecked, it can lead to that chaotic busyness that cuts into the most important parts in your life. Because saying 'yes' to one thing is saying 'no' to others. "
"Finally, define the things you are saying 'yes' to in advance, and make them non-negotiable. Decide ahead of time that everything that would impede on your 'yesses' will receive a 'no'."
"[S]eek balance amidst imbalance. Life is not the teeter-totter we imagine, where achieving perfect balance will result in a perpetual blissful existence. Perfect balance doesn’t exist. Life is by nature unbalanced."
"Some phases will feel like winter—a time to slow down, hunker down, and endure the cold. Others may feel like spring—a time of new growth, new opportunities, and new horizons. Some seasons are for hibernation, some for harvest. The key is to embrace the balance of the imbalance."
"[W]e should seek balance in our own lives, not all at once, but in seasons, and strive to thrive through both busyness and rest, through times of productivity and times of slowing down, recognizing that neither is valuable or sustainable without the other. "
"Part of the courage in slowing down is being brave enough to confront this discomfort with thought and action: In our thoughts by continually reframing our perspective when culture creep tries to demand we define our value by its standards. And in our actions, by gradually integrating moments of slowness into our lives."
Website: http://modernrenaissance.ca/
Blog: http://modernrenaissance.ca/blog/
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