Busy is as Busy Does

Busy is as Busy Does

How do you spend your free time?

Okay, I hear some of you laughing and it sounds a little bit hysterical, so I want you to breathe a few deep breaths.

One of those super annoying things that people say is, “Everybody has the same number of hours in their days. It’s just a matter of how you choose to spend them.”

I get teased a lot about being busy. And, on the one hand, I do have a lot of my time committed to things, mostly things I love to do. I have my job, my work, I take a couple classes, I teach a few classes, visit my family out of town. I have several weekly and monthly social commitments, and the normal allotment of errands and tasks. I have a daily qigong practice, and meditation practice. I get to write to you every day.

On the other hand, I make sure that I have free time pretty much every day. I think of free time as time with no structure, no commitment, no plans. Free time is when I say, “Hmm, I think I will do X for a while.” Free time is when I ask, “How relaxed can I possibly get?”

Some days, that free time is when I take a bathroom break, or am driving somewhere. Some days, it’s the whole dang day. Sometimes, I make several days in a row of unstructured time.

However much it is, I make sure that I feel it. How do I feel when I have free time?

Things can get in the way of our enjoying our free time.

Some of us feel like we have to fill every moment with doing things for everyone else. We feel guilty, and think that if we do enough, we will stop feeling guilty. There is no such thing as “enough” and no matter how much you do, if you are coming from a place of guilt, you will never feel free. Dump that guilt now.

Some of us feel like we have so much free time that we could choke a horse with it. We get bored. Here’s a cool thing I found out about bored; it’s all in our heads! When we are bored, the thing to do is get our bodies moving. Go for a walk, do some jumping jacks, or maybe some burpees, remember burpees? The point is to get your body juiced up, tax it a bit, and that will get your juices flowing again, and bye bye boredom.

Over and over we find out that if we want to live a life we love, we have to spend some time thinking about what that would mean for us. We have to respect ourselves enough to take the time and energy to figure out what we want, how we would like to spend our time, who makes us feel wonderful, where we like to be, and so on.

Is there something you think you would love to do, but haven’t tried yet? How could you get started with it? Who would support your efforts?

Is there something you used to do that you want to get back to? How can you make room for it in your life?

How have I changed from ignoring my wants and needs to respecting my entire process?