In November’s Get it we tackle the ‘busy-ness’ epidemic. Samantha Taylor is founder of The Nurture Project. Sam and her team have helped hundreds of women overcome anxiety by guiding them in the oft-neglected life skills of self-care, exercise, nutrition, meditation, and sleep.
Here, Sam’s provided expert comment on the topic, to complement her thoughts featured in the new issue 👇
Recharging is as important as doing.
Get your ‘me’ time here:
We have a time log that we give clients – you can view or download it here (PDF).
Keep a record of your time for at least a day and also reflect on each of the activities you do during the day; how you felt during and afterwards, what are the things that made you feel good, what are the things that made you feel stressed?
Based on the answers, we’d get clients to work out what they could do with more of in their lives, what they should do less of, when might be a good time in each day for ‘me’ time and what changes they can make to their lives to accommodate that.
You too can have a go at filling this in and deciding where to make these changes.
This is about giving yourself permission to prioritise your needs over anything and everyone else.
Men don’t seem to have a problem with this but as women we’re not used to doing that and there is guilt associated with it. At some point, hopefully before the stress of busy-ness turns into anxiety or depression, we need to re-prioritise and acknowledge that recharging is as important as activity.
The society in which we live has got really good at a lot of things; really good at providing for many of our physical needs, but at the same time what we have done is moved away from meeting a lot of our deep seated psychological needs (for example to love, acknowledge and accept ourselves).
We’re so busy, hyper connected and stressed that we don’t have time for self care or self reflection. We’ve lost touch with who we really are. Many of us don’t know what the values are by which we live our lives. Most of us don’t know what our version of success looks like, or know what our purpose is. We are so busy looking for fulfilment ‘out there’ that we don’t look inside. We are disconnected from ourselves.
Being overly busy and feeling the need to cram so much in, constantly ‘achieving’ means that we are chronically stressed.
The number one indicator that someone will develop anxiety or depression is chronic stress (usually for around ten months). In some cases stress turns to anxiety, in other cases it turns to depression and in some cases to both anxiety and depression.
When you consider that serious cases of anxiety and depression have been rising each year in Australia, the US and throughout the Western world for the past ten years it makes you realise that our busy-ness is causing a stress, anxiety and depression epidemic.
Being aware of this mindset is the first step to changing it.
The benefits changing the ‘busy-ness’ mindset are:
- Reduced stress levels with all the physical and mental health benefits that brings
- Greater creativity
- Greater productivity (being less busy means that when you do focus you are better able to achieve)
- Better ability to focus
- More emotional stability
- You may find you learn more about yourself, who you really are underneath all the busy-ness.
Find Sam on Facebook and Instagram.
You might also like to find out more about how to claim back your valuable time, by reading Jo O’Donovan’s blog from earlier in the month.
