“How are you?”
“I’m so busy”

This is the most common line I hear in conversation especially with business people and mums. It’s definitely a thing I used to say a lot and now I try not to say it at all.

If I feel like I am about to say “I’m busy” I take a moment to reconsider and to take responsibility. Instead I say: “I’m fully engaged with my life” or “I have a lot on” or something like that.

If you like to say you’re busy please go ahead. I don’t judge you. I just know that when I was saying “I’m busy” it was a number of things. It was a badge of martyrdom. It was an abdication of my responsibility. It was a cop out and it was an excuse.

It felt good to say I was busy. It was me, as a mother, putting myself last. I was making excuses for why I couldn’t put my self care and wellbeing first in my life and the problem with that is: no-one else in the world is going to put me first. They might be playing the same mothering game as me and failing to put themselves first, but they certainly aren’t going to put me first. I needed to do that.

My health declined and I simply couldn’t be busy. Plus, being busy was making me sick. I was anemic with HMB and I needed to learn a new way of being. Stress and overwork were making my condition worse and after a bout in hospital I finally committed to a new direction.

I had to learn to see the mindsets and beliefs that were keeping me stuck. I had to remind myself again and again that I am the boss and I get to make the rules. I had to release a lot of my employee mindset hangovers and step into a new paradigm aside from capitalism’s demands to do, do, do for more, more, more. I had to decide what I personally want from my life and business and redefine my goals. 

I worked with Bear Herbert on her course called Freely. It helped me to claim and define what I really need and how much I need to charge to achieve that. It aligned with my values and I changed my hourly rate easily. 

I had to ask a lot of questions. Do I really want a 6 or 7 figure business? What do I want my days to look like? What are my priorities? What are my interests and who decides how much I should do? Should I let my imagination decide what other people think I should do or should I honour my body, intuition and health indicators. It’s really helped me sit deeper into being and to release the incessant desire for more, to do more, to have more. To simply be is one of the most challenging things for me and when I can tap into it there is such peace. 

I realised that I couldn’t blame my partner, his family, my family or society. I learned that even if they do think those things about me, I needed to leave those opinions and judgements with them to save my life. I had to get good at saying no and taking the time to discern where my energy was best spent. In reality that looks like a lot of mistakes, a lot of over-doing it migraines and a lot of days in bed. It has taken dozens of reiterations of my calendar and it’s something I’m still working on every week and every day. 

Ultimately I see that I need to continue to take responsibility. It’s my responsibility to take care of my wellbeing. I and only I am responsible for the hours I work and how I work. It’s entirely up to me to structure my days and commitments so that I can have the life I want. 

It’s super satisfying and it’s also very uncomfortable but when I think about being an employee I’m just not sure how I would go. I feel like I’ve learned a lot of lessons and I’m in a completely different field to a lot of people, particularly people who don’t have a business.  The level of uncertainty in business sits closely with the truth of the uncertainty of life itself and being an employee helps us forget that. It lulls us into a false sense of security with weekly payment but the truth of the uncertainty if life remains. That is a pretty scary truth for most of us. 

I’ve had to learn to emotionally regulate myself when I’m in stressful situations instead of disassociating. I’m still learning that one. I am still learning how much time I need in nature and how much I need quiet. From my perspective it’s all a big experiment and I’m still playing the game. I’ve had to grow the **** up and stop being a baby child who expects the parents/teachers/doctors/government/whoever to fix it all for me and take absolute responsibility for my life. 

We all have a choice. We all chose to be where we currently are whether we realise or not. I choose how I relate to my life circumstances and I find that very satisfying. I practice being satisfied. Satisfied with what I have. I take time to notice all that I have. I feel very lucky and grateful. And I’m never busy. 

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