Tag: too busy

What about your own oxygen mask?

I write. That is what I do. All the time.

Sometimes I hear from a friend, or someone I don’t know at all, that my words made a difference for them–made them feel understood, not alone, inspired them. And that is why I write.

When I write, life makes more sense to me, and I feel the big feelings like thankfulness or courage or determination, and I begin to understand complicated subjects as I wade through them sentence by sentence. And that is why I write, too.

So . . . I write.

Except, not a whole lot these last few months.

The dry spells feel like “failure” and “fraud” to me. But the calmer, more thoughtful part of my brain reminds me of a big lesson I’ve been learning this year.

“Please put your own oxygen mask on first, before assisting others.”

Why?

Because if you run out of oxygen while trying to help others breathe, you can’t help anymore.

Only by ensuring your own health first, can you continue showing up to help others.

Do you realize, once in a while, that you’ve been running around trying to help others with their oxygen masks, neglecting the fact that yours has slipped off?

And what do you do when you realize that you’re showing up for others so much that you are no longer showing up for yourself?

Have you tried just keeping that pace up? Ignoring the burning in your lungs, insistent on showing up for others, even if it means you’re suffocating? What happens then? Do you finally hit a wall? (Or do you know you will?) And does your depleted energy even help the people you’re so determined to help?

So my challenge for you today is this:

Can you remember that your own oxygen mask has to come first?

And in an exhausting year like this year, full of sad and angry and lonely people, can you still remember that your own oxygen mask has to come first?

Are you allowed to disappear for a minute?

Urgent vs important

Henry David Thoreau - Not enough to be busy

Can you imagine the feeling, finishing up a task, sitting back, and thinking to yourself, “Hmm… I literally have nothing left to do today!” That would be really weird, right???

Life just needs to slow down. Right? But I have a hundred things to do today. So much to catch up on. So much to organize, fix, clean, or find. So many people to get back to. Those things I’ve been wanting to try, and stuff I’ve been invited to.

I happen to think it’s a particularly American tradition to live every day at a breakneck speed. We never, ever, ever run out of things to do right away. When my wife and I got married and honeymooned in Italy we learned that the entire country traditionally closes its shops and sends its people home from work for a few hours over lunch. I often reminisce about my days in Ethiopia and Uganda, where even hard-working people walk slowly wherever they go and spend hours in peace and quiet with family or friends.

Unfortunately, we don’t have that luxury in the States. We have stuff to do. Always. We wear our over-flowing inboxes and day-planners like a badge, like there’s something special about our ability to cram a thousand little things into every single day.

But what are we even busy doing?

 

When are we going to do those deeper, bigger, more meaningful life things? The things we keep putting off “until we have more time.”

I think the big things that we want to do–that we want to look back and be happy about at the end of our lives–we want to do just right, and we want to do with unlimited time and attention. So we keep putting our real life off while we try to catch up with our bottomless stack of to-dos.

 

What would happen if you set aside the urgent stuff today? Let them just not happen? Would you finally start writing that book? Take your kid out to do something fun together? Make a plan to eat healthier and exercise?

And what if you kept ignoring so many of those “urgent” things–would you keep writing, stay more connected to your loved ones, and discover you actually have time to get to the gym most days?

 

Urgent vs Important–we constantly face a choice between the two. Urgent is the squeaky wheel whining for your attention. But at the end of your life, which will you wish you had chosen more often? Urgent or important?

What big life thing have you been putting off for years because you’re always too busy? What if you decided this weekend you were just going to start it–no matter what notifications pop up?