Sorry, I'm too busy to tell you how busy I am.

In today's society we wear "busy" as a badge of identity and in some ways, it becomes a means of comparison. We associate "busyness" with success; the busier you appear, the more you probably have your life together, so we think anyway. Being too busy to breathe, it seems, has become an epidemic in today's modern world. We all have too much to do too much of the time in an ever-continuing loop of responsibilities. We are suffering, compromising our health with irrepressible anxiety and devouring stress because of our daily overextension. And for what? Why do we allow ourselves to wear the busy card as a badge of honor?

Our busy-ness has become a distraction from life itself. We are swarming ourselves with tasks we think will satisfy us, when in reality we are scraping off the edges of our sanity bit by bit. Doesn't it seem a bit ironic we are making ourselves insane through our efforts to do what we think is keeping us sane? Who are we really trying to please in doing such? We are muddling from one distraction to the next, to keep our minds and bodies in motion because any hesitation will show weakness and incompatibility to keep up with the swift world around us. We are giving little bits and pieces to too many people, places, and things rather than giving meaningful portions of yourself to a few things that genuinely matter to us.

In a world spinning at breakneck speed, we must try to keep up, right? We hurry to write down every note we can, communicate with every person we see, seize every moment, shove down our lunch, rush to get to work, rush to get home from work....we are constantly moving so quickly it seems as if we don't schedule anytime in our life to just breathe. When did we come to a point in which we glorify the title of busy?

In reality, we really create most of our own issues. We immerse ourselves in unnecessary turbulence with no sincere benefit to our well-being, but we do anyway because either everyone else does or we for some reason think it's just what we should do. There is no time to sit back and enjoy the expansiveness of our experiences, no time for intimacy with our own lives. We are throwing away any chance of mindfulness because we are too wrapped up in every thought in our mind.

There is no "here." No presence or stillness of our complete souls or hearts. When was the last time you truly experienced something? No phone or screen diverting your attention. No distractions sidetracking you. No over-cramming thoughts of what you have to do or where you have to be or what you should be doing instead. But at full capacity, you genuinely appreciated and savored a moment for what it truly was.

Stop letting busyness entitle your validity in this world. You are allowed to slow down, you are allowed to take a break, and you are always allowed to say no. As pessimistic as it may sound, at our core humanistic bodies, we are approaching the same thing, death. Yes, we need to work and get tasks done. But we also need to do a cartwheel in the backyard, read a good book, spend time with family members we don't give enough time to, and ground ourselves in stillness more often. Opt-out sometimes, take a walk on a beautiful day by yourself, turn off your phone, or do things to nurture your well-being. Do all of these more often than what is initially comfortable because the more you take time for yourself, the more you will understand your true being and what really embodies who you are and what you define as success.