I get it. You’re busy. You’re really, really busy. You’re so busy that you think no one can possibly understand how busy you are. You let everyone know how busy you are every second you get because you think that they can’t understand it. You have a job that stresses you out that you can’t get away from and when you’re home, you need to decompress so you binge on bad TV. When you have some spare time and get a night out with your friends, you even spend it talking about how busy you are instead of actually so that they can understand. Does this sound familiar?
When your friends talk about their busy lives and schedules, you cut them off to let them know you understand because you’re even busier than they are. You’re always making sure that you’re one-upping them and you don’t know why. After you get home from your night out, you wonder why you spent it complaining about your busy-ness and overwhelm instead of actually enjoying a night away from it all.
This is a crappy game that you want to stop. You’re starting to annoy yourself so you can imagine how annoyed your friends are getting with your complaining. You feel embarrassed that you’re always complaining. Plus you secretly know that you make yourself busier than you need to be but it makes you feel important to say how busy you are all the time. It’s okay — don’t feel bad about it anymore. Let’s just change this obnoxious habit once and for all.
Here’s what you need to do to change this:
- Look at your schedule for the week every Sunday and see where you have free time (yes you do have free time but you just usually waste it on TMZ or Facebook).
- During that free time, think about what you want to do instead and put your phone out of sight so that you don’t get distracted by it (start with 15 minutes and work your way up to 30 minutes).
- Enjoy that time — take time to get used to not being busy for a little while. You may get mad at yourself when you feel like grabbing your phone or doing work. Remember, you’re creating a new habit. Just keep breathing through it and it will get easier
- Keep doing this even when it feels really hard to do. I promise it will get easier and you won’t feel as busy and overwhelmed as you used to.
- Pay attention to your desire to say “I’m busy” and when it comes up just pause and acknowledge it. Ask yourself why you want to keep telling yourself that same old story.
- Enjoy your new freedom that you’ll feel when you realize that there aren’t any benefits of one-upping your friends about how busy they are.
This is going to take a little bit of time and practice but you’ll be able to get away from that overwhelming feeling of “I’m so busy” all the time and take conscious breaks so that you can enjoy your life. I’ve learned this less on myself. As a (former) stress addict, I’ve had to train myself out of always wanting to be busy (and always wanting to complain about it) and now I actually can enjoy my time with my friends (and they enjoy their time with me more too!).
P.S. Ready to quit this game so you can have more fun + freedom and spend your time on useful things like training for a marathon or traveling the world? Grab a complimentary 30 minute coaching call HERE.
