Latest / In The Driver's Seat / I Stopped Rushing Through Life. Here's What Happened
Transcript
- Lisa: When's the last time you sat somewhere quiet? No phone, no TV, no background noise, and truly felt peace. Not antsy, not guilty, not like you were just wasting time, like you really felt calm and okay. If you had to think about that for a second, this episode is for you. And if the question made you a little uncomfortable, it is definitely for you. We live in a world that has made busyness a personality trait and stillness feels like a luxury. So I want to talk about what is it doing to us as a society because I think a lot of us are running on a setting that is not doing us any favors. So, what kind of busy are you? I'm gonna go over three different types of busyness that you might ⁓ fall into, category you might fall into, and the different traits of those. And the first one is ⁓ what I call a buzz addict. These are people who are busy by choice and they are proud of it. They have a full calendar, they're always producing. And they really get a high from checking things off the list. Busyness is their identity. This is a person who runs on high energy. They are people who might volunteer to take on extra projects at work. They are often in leadership roles. And they somehow still have time to make it to every social event on a calendar. They're highly driven, they're goal-oriented, they're often first ones at work, last ones to leave type of people. They thrive on momentum. People might describe them as someone who gets things done. They wear that as a badge. Their vision of relaxing on the weekend still has a full itinerary. They're not necessarily stressed. Because they genuinely love the pace and it's impressive to to others around them. The question is whether they have actually chosen to stop long enough to find out what they want in life when no one is asking anything of them. I had a friend who was very much this person. And she was fun to be around. I loved spending time with her. She was always a good ⁓ in a good mood. The energy, the fun, the ⁓ high energy just made you want to spend a lot of time with her but i remember one time for her birthday ⁓ ⁓ us tickets to go to an amusement park which was obviously very much up her alley you know it's high pay you know ⁓ of things going on ⁓ at the end of the day we ended up ⁓ the water park area ⁓ it was complete opposite of what we had been doing, where we were just chilled out, riding in the lazy river ⁓ and talking, it was just so relaxed. ⁓ That not something she would have probably ever done on her own. Not to mention, it was just the two of us, which normally she's she had she was always surrounded by lots of people. And she told me that that was one of the most relaxing days she'd had in a long time because that wouldn't have been something that she would have chosen for herself. So another category would be the burnout. This is someone who's exhausted and they know it. They want to slow down, ⁓ but every quiet moment just automatically gets filled up with something on their calendar. Usually other people's stuff like children's or their spouse. So the slowdown just never really quite happens. And they often will feel guilty resting. ⁓ They want off the treadmill, but they just don't know how to exit the treadmill. This person was probably a buzz addict, the other type, the first type I talked about, at some point. ⁓ they are living like one right now without the energy to back it up anymore. ⁓ They are responsible, they are capable, and they have been caring a lot for a really long time. They show up for everyone, work, family, friends. And somewhere along the way, they stop showing up for themselves. They know they are running on empty. They say it out loud sometimes, but every time a quiet moment opens up, something will fill that space up before they can ⁓ get own quiet time in there. The list is always longer than the day. ⁓ Sunday evenings a specific weight, like the weekend wasn't long enough. They ⁓ end up scrolling night to try to decompress. ⁓ And then they just wake up the next day feeling unrested. This person does not need more motivation. They need permission to take a break. And that permission feels harder to give themselves than it should. Good examples of in this category would for sure like be parents, parents who are, you know, working full-time. ⁓ And then when they're not at work, they have children in school activities or sports. They're running households, cooking meals and keeping the house running with laundry and all other things. ⁓ So that can very easily end up making feel burnt out. And then at the of like if it you do if these people do have children, when the children leave. the nest, ⁓ ⁓ really don't know what to do with themselves. They feel lost because their identity was so long wrapped up in that busyness all the time. And the third type are the people who cannot sit still. For some people, the inability to tolerate quiet is a protection mechanism, not their actual personality trait. Their nervous system learned at some point that stillness was not safe. So their nervous system just constantly stays alert. They stay busy, they stay stimulated. It's a reflex, not a choice. This person might not even identify as busy. They're not necessarily ambitious or driven in the traditional sense, But there is a restlessness to them that other people notice even if they can't quite name it. These people feel silence without thinking about it. Like, you know, the TV goes on for background noise, The phone comes out for any pause at all. A quiet room does not feel peaceful to them. It actually feels uncomfortable in a way that's just really hard to explain. They may have tried things like meditation and abandoned it, not because a lack of time, but because the stillness is just too much People close to them might say things like, you never relax, or you always have to be doing something. And the honest answer that sitting with nothing ⁓ makes them uneasy. For this person, the busyness is a choice or a habit, it is a response. And understanding that distinction is the beginning of possibly identifying something that is unhealed from their past. ⁓ when dealing with something hard, it's easier just to stay occupied than to process the heavy emotions, such as after you've lost a loved one and you're going through the grief, it's much easier to just ⁓ stay busy you don't think about your loved one is no longer here. So a lighter story ⁓ just kind of describe this. ⁓ An that I have was a few years ago, I had met a guy through a dating app, ⁓ and we met a little restaurant, super casual, ⁓ and ⁓ we talking, know, like you get to know each other, ask questions and whatever. ⁓ Any time that the conversation would stop, he would immediately find something else to talk about. There was there was never just kind of like this pause ⁓ in conversation where maybe you're you're looking around the restaurant, of observing things and you know enjoying the moment. I actually agreed to go across the street. There was like a little tiki beach bar thing that we went to just to have a drink and ⁓ talk a little more. ⁓ super fast and then asked me I was walking slow. I said, I'm not walking slow. You just walk really, really fast. ⁓ And then again, there was no quietness. There was never a pause in the conversation. And energy, it was really uncomfortable for me to be with because it wasn't fun. I could feel the anxiousness. Like, why is it bothering you to, especially when we were sitting by the the beach, like why wouldn't you just listen to the waves or watch the people ⁓ the kids playing or You know, just enjoying the moment. There was never any of that. So all three of these people ⁓ are exhausting in ways, especially that guy. ⁓ And all of deserve to understand what is happening underneath all this. So our nervous system was designed for short bursts of stress, then recovery. So a threat would appear, your body responds, the threat passes, the body rests. That is how we are designed. What we have done is keep the threat signal running all day, every day. Deadlines, notifications on our phone, watching the news, scrolling on our phones. Your body cannot tell the difference between a real threat and a buzzing phone. It's still a stimulus, it's still a stress ⁓ activator. That stress mode stays on. Harvard Health puts it this way. Chronic low-level stress keeps a stress response activated, much like a motor that is idling way too high for way too long. And over time, that takes a toll. So here's what makes it a loop. When the nervous system stays activated, it starts to crave the stimulation. That is what an activated nervous system does. It looks for the next input, which is why the phone gets picked up without you even thinking about it. It's why you can't watch a show on Netflix without also scrolling. It's why a room being too quiet can feel uneasy. The brain has been trained to need the buzz. Research shows that the average person checks their phone around 205 times a day. That's roughly once every five minutes during your waking hours. So we've stopped resting between the inputs of stress because we're always in a state of stress. We have forgotten what the rest periods feel like. And the part that surprises people, the thing that most of us reach for to decompress, like scrolling on social apps or watching your Netflix show, that does not complete the stress cycle. Studies show that social media use is associated with an increased stress response, not a decreased one. The self-medication is the thing that is making it worse. But here's the good news. The brain can rewire. That's called neuroplasticity. Creating a habit of small repeated moments of stillness will rebuild that pathway. The brain adapted into this pattern of constant overstimulation and it can adapt back out of it. Awareness of the habit is the first step. So this is a biology problem, not a willpower power problem. And the first move out of it is understanding what is happening so you can make a change. I have three things for you to try to help you get out of this loop of feeling the stress and getting ⁓ cortisol levels back down and getting out of that fight or flight mode that your body is stuck in. One would be a sixty second sit. So before you pick up your phone in the morning, Just wait. Wait sixty seconds. Take a pause. Sit with your coffee. Look out the window for a while. Just do nothing. This is not a meditation, it's not breathing exercise. It's just a goal to practice tolerating the stillness for 60 seconds until it starts to feel more comfortable. So as you start there, ⁓ then if you can do 60 seconds, then up the time ⁓ till you tolerate more and more time. ⁓ Something else you could try is doing a meal without your phone. ⁓ pick a one meal, eat your whole meal without looking at your phone, look around, talk with people, Enjoy your food and whatever thoughts that that come up during ⁓ meal. This one is actually a little harder than it sounds, but being aware of the difficulty is the point. The moment the discomfort of sitting with yourself for 20 minutes becomes noticeable the moment you can begin to regulate your nervous system. And the last one is pretty easy. It's just kind of an end of the day question. So it's taking an audit of your day and ask yourself before you go to sleep, was I busy today ⁓ or was I present? And know, don't judge yourself for how the day went, but over time will be able to recognize the pattern, and awareness is always the first move. So those are again three just small signals to your nervous system, and each one says it's safe to slow down. The more you send that signal to your body, the more your body begins to believe it. So now I'll go back to the question I asked you at the beginning. When was the last time sat somewhere quiet and at peace? If that is a hard question to answer, that is a sign that your nervous system has be been working very hard for a very long time. ⁓ it might be ready for a little reset. Just start with 60 seconds. So that is it for how to stop rushing through life and always feeling busy. If you'd like more things like that to help you with your everyday life and to see the different possibilities for your life. ⁓ I a newsletter that's free. You can subscribe at LisaFrench.rocks forward slash newsletter, ⁓ or I also have the link in the show notes. Thank you so much for spending your time with me. I really mean And so until the next time, just know, you're always in the driver's seat of your life.