“…busy…That’s the armor everyone put on to pretend they had a purpose in the world.” -From the poem Red Brocade by Naomi Shihab Nye as quoted in the Sept./Oct. ’14 issue of Spirituality & Health
I don’t know about you, but that line landed dead center for me. I have been noticing the ever accelerating “busyness” in our clients’ lives and our own. Just because we can move faster and do more things today doesn’t mean we should or that it is good for us, those around us, or life on the planet!
What if you only did a few things and those things were the most highly leveraged actions that would move you towards fulfilling your life’s purpose. Too busy to think about, let alone articulate your purpose? If so, you don’t have to question whether any of that busyness matters. You can just go on confusing action with meaningful results.
If your rebuttal is that you are busy fulfilling someone else’s commitments, for example the boss’s or the team you are on, have you looked to see if anything about that busyness fulfills your own purpose? If you are feeling very stressed out, good chance there is a big gap between your life’s purpose and the path you are on. You are out of balance, (balance being defined as being who you are and freely living your values in every area of your life).
Creating an intervention that has the strength to divert you from your current life to one that is consistent with your life’s purpose requires you to dig deeply into your purpose. I recommend asking the question “what is the intention that is wanting to use my life?” You may have to ask yourself that many times over and listen carefully to the soft voice that speaks to you about that. You may even want to secure a coach/facilitator, take courses, commit yourself to learning to meditate, or consider other practices to build your contemplative capacities.
If you discover that you have given up on this lifetime and are living as if this one is practice for the next one when you will be really purposeful, dig deeply into what that is about. Be ruthless with yourself about giving up the story you have been telling yourself about how this one is not going to turn out. Every powerful life has to be invented and re-invented in the middle of life and all its messy circumstances.
An old Zen saying is, “if you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.” Consider that each day that you spend in the swirl is one less day you have on the planet to fulfill that intention. Consider that all your busyness is using up the irreplaceable world’s resource called “you.” Only you have been genetically programmed to deliver you, the purpose/intention that is your life. Get focused on unpacking the whole busyness drama and get on purpose.