If you have an ounce of Type A/overachiever/busy-busy 🐝 DNA OR if you tend to escape, avoid, numb out and distract 🦥 (🙋🏻♀️ i got both), then you may struggle with making time for the following essentials needed for growth and expansion along the healing journey. These include:
- Stillness
- Rest
- Play and wonder
- Doing the Inner Emotional “Work” (which often feels like “doing” nothing, or like losing it or falling apart).
By “not-doing”, I invite more true healing, freedom and flow into my human experience.
What’s been really helpful for me these days as I’m forced to surrender to this new way of existing, is to simply reframe productivity.
We’ve been literally programmed to view productivity as the pinnacle of virtue, success and self-worth. For me, I used to be all about accomplishment, crossing things off the list and getting things done. ✅ (In the home, in my health and body, in my business – in ALL aspects of life.)
However, I’ve realized that constantly being busy (and subsequently numbing or tuning out) is more likely a coping mechanism and compensation for insecurities, lack, limiting beliefs &/or traumas experienced in childhood.
Being busy is a great way to avoid feeling your feelings.
This realization has played a big part in my mid-life evolution – freeing me from the pressures and ups and downs that productivity-worship and taking-on too much often bring.
What I spend a lot of time on lately, wouldn’t make the cut of what would be considered “productive” in societal terms. Things like…
- Being in complete stillness.
- Napping, sleeping, resting.
- Exploring and connecting to God/Nature and all She has to show me.
- Reading or listening to deep/inspirational/insightful/healing content.
- Listening to or creating/vocalizing words, sounds or music.
- Taking in or creating art in any form.
- Embodiment/expressive practices (dancing, singing, movement, chanting, humming, whistling, crying)
- Attending and replaying my healing sessions where I further expand my consciousness and self-realizations.
- Soaking in a tub until I’m pruned. 🛀
- Deep conversation with a friend or supportive community.
- Playing (grand-babies are great for this!)
- Journaling (and lately, flow writing) my feelings, thoughts, dreams, desires, insights and challenges.
Yet all these seemingly “non-productive” things have been essential along my healing journey, creating more flow, abundance, happiness and vitality within me and my life.
How?
Because each of these “time wasters” helps me bring-in more and connect more with my heart consciousness and feminine energy 💞.
This creates more balance and integration between my heart, spirit and soul (feminine aspects) and the mental/physical/masculine aspects that our culture tends to glorify….
…so that the mundane tasks that need to get done, don’t feel so forced or daunting. I nourish and nurture my body-mind & soul intuitively and creatively.
The heart creates the true and aligned desires and guides the body-mind into an ease and flow of physical and mental action. It’s like this magical dance of TRUSTING & ALLOWING that flow…no force needed.
If you’re like I was, where a day spent NOT physically “DOING” what my “MIND” deemed as “productive” felt downright shameful and even depressing, know that you have a new choice:
You can choose to prioritize (or at minimum place equal value on) connecting with and opening your heart – on feeling your feelings – on cultivating more inner healing and awareness – on elevating time spent on rest and play.
You can choose to reframe and create a new definition of productivity. What really matters, will get done. Trust. Let me know how this goes for you!
xo,
Ev
P.S. One important note on this (which could be it’s own post or even a book) is the attachment/habit/addiction many of us have to screens (phones, TV, computers, gaming, devices). We may call these activities “downtime” too. But the more I look at this in my own life, the more I realize how much our screens separate us from our heart consciousness…. Yes, they can be incredibly productive and necessary tools, but mostly, they’re total time suckers.
Be aware if it’s a habit to work on moderating. Be willing to look at the role “it” (or any depleting habit) plays in your day-to-day life and assess its impact on your ability to feel more joy and to live life fully from the heart.
