What’s Your Vice?
Are you addicted to being busy?
Now wait. Before I go any further, I want you to pay attention.
I mean you may actually already have something else up on your screen or you might be in another conversation. The fact of the matter is we’re trying to multitask so much today it’s profoundly ridiculous.
If I followed you around with a notepad and recorded how much focused time you spent on a specific thing, what would it be? I mean 100 percent being present. Think about that. As a celebrity or as an entrepreneur or as an executive. How much focused time do you spend on any given task? We’ll take notes. That’s an external track.
Then let’s say we did an internal track. We hooked you up to some type of electrode so we could watch your thoughts (which in technology actually exists, right?). We’d watch the thoughts that occur and observe how erratic your thinking really is. You’d probably be really surprised at how quickly you can jump from one thing to another and not stay on the point.
Then, there’s the fact that we get so addicted to being busy. What I find from the clients that I coach is that oftentimes in their lives, they have a vice somewhere. They know that their brains are going all the time and that they are in the mode of getting things done continually and consistently.
So much so that at the end of the day, when the weekend comes, or whatever it is, the vice enters the equation.
What’s the vice? Usually it’s alcohol or even marijuana. (I hope that’s okay to say in a video, but I’m just telling you the truth from some of the people that I work with).
Now I’m not against any type of recreational activity that you want to enjoy as long as it’s for the right reasons. If you’re doing it because you can’t shut your brain off because you still have to unpack everything that’s been going on, but you can’t seem to unpack everything all at once and you are so overloaded internally that it’s the only way that you can pull back and get in the moment… Well, then to me, you have a problem.
You see, I believe stillness should be part of our day. Then in order to be mindful, in order to be focused, in order to really get something accomplished in a moment, we have to be able to stay in the moment. And in order to do that we have to start practicing ways to do it.
To me, there’s really only one way to get good at that and that’s to have an ongoing daily meditation practice. I encourage you to find someone that you can work with that can mentor you, that can train you, or help get you get trained to mindfully meditate every day so that you can learn to direct your mind, control your thoughts, stay focused, and find the still point you deserve. When you can do this, you don’t need to unplug yourself with a chemical that isn’t necessary.