LIFE COACH
THE ART OF BEING ‘NOT’ BUSY By Debbie Kemp
Recently a friend playfully teased me, sarcastically saying “Oh because you’re SO busy”. They were referencing the fact that I’m six months on from selling a business that kept me very busy, and that I haven’t done anything glaringly obvious since then to fill my time. Filling time has become quite the societal trend, right? But why choose that? For the first time in a long time, I am very intentionally being NOT busy, NOT rushed, and NOT overwhelmed. It feels so good! My nervous system feels calm and regulated and my health feels so easy to maintain, despite living in current times and amongst so much collective fear. That’s what slowing down gifts us. That’s what honouring self does for us. It hasn’t been smooth sailing and it definitely wasn’t an overnight process.
54 | eYs Magazine, Winter 2022
Stay with me and I’ll share the ride with you. My business was a childcare centre. It was open from 7am until 6pm every day, and whilst I wasn’t there every day, the calls came at all times of the day. My husband also runs a business, in the construction industry, and often works quite long hours. We have two very active children, and our family life felt like it was in a very constant and very busy juggle. Not unusual, I know. But we decided that something had to give. It was time for me to be more present with our family and to bring more calm to our home. When I first sold my business, some other things kept me busy. I schooled the kids during our covid lockdown and then I managed some other family related projects. As soon as they were complete, some sort of nervous energy kicked in. “What will I do with myself now?” I asked myself, feeling very uncomfortable with being NOT
busy. It felt like I needed a project, or a job, to fill my days and to make me feel… like I was contributing? Like I was being productive ‘enough’?
It’s challenging to describe the level of restlessness I felt in that time. They say change isn’t easy! Surely taking a lot of work off my plate should’ve been, but there was so much discomfort. This change was stripping away so many layers of who I’d become over the years. I’d stopped doing something that I was really good at, stopped bringing in an income, and stopped regularly interacting with the team of staff that had become my work family. It was a lot. The easiest thing for me to do, emotionally, was to find a job. Believe me, I looked. Whilst some jobs looked appealing, there was consistently something that didn’t work for me… the money, the location, the hours, sometimes all of the above.
