329 Joanna Hennon + Holly ~ How To Get Past Your Addiction To Busyness

Today’s Guest

Table of Contents

Joanna Hennon and I are back with another co-hosted episode! Today, we talk about how to get past your addiction to busyness. I’ve talked about this before, in episode 321 on How to Balance Your Focus Between the Journey and the Destination. This is something I really struggle with: I now give myself permission to take time off and rest when I need to…yet I feel guilty about it, which kind of defeats the purpose.

I thought I had broken my addiction to busyness, but Joanna pointed out to me that the fact that I have so much guilt over being un-busy means that it’s still alive and kicking. I was a bit shocked when she said that to me before we started recording, and I also knew she was right. Life is a balance: between effort and ease, between work and rest, between being busy and un-busy.

Every moment of every day, we have a choice, and unfortunately many of us do not make this a conscious choice. We just DO. We’re so focused on DOING that we often forget to FEEL. As Joanna says in this episode, we’re so focused on our goals that we forget the journey — and even worse, we forget that the journey is OUR LIFE.

Let that sink in for a minute.

I wish you a lifetime of balance, from here on out. I know that experiencing balance is like building a muscle: we’ve got to choose it, regularly and consistently. It takes work. It takes effort. And it’s worth it.

I hope you find this episode useful, as always! I know I did.

More About Joanna Hennon

Joanna is a #SoulSmart Success Mentor – she helps people to easily create more success by using the wisdom and power we all have access to at soul level. Living life from a place of soul power, in tune with your higher self and your Guides, and using the Law of Attraction with intention will literally change your life! To get started, grab one of these free resources.

Listen to this episode

What You’ll Learn

What is addiction to busyness + why it’s a problem
Why we glorify busyness + hard work + DOING
What’s the difference between busyness + hard work
Why we’re so unwilling to be un-busy
How we entangle our self worth + identity with our busyness
Why we find it so hard for us to say that we’re doing well
How to disengage from the hustle mentality when it’s all around us
How to put in effort without stressing yourself out with hustle
How to give yourself permission to be un-busy — guilt-free
How to know when you actually need to push yourself
How to balance enjoying life + achieving things
How to enjoy the journey as you work toward your goals

Things We Discussed

Connect with Joanna

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Transcript

The transcript for this episode can also be downloaded here (no opt-in required).

Holly: Hi Joanna!

Joanna: Hi Holly!

Holly: I am super-excited that we are back for another podcast episode.

Joanna: It has been a while I think!

Holly: It has, I have missed you, even though I have been in touch with you {laughing}. We have just not been podcasting!

Joanna: Indeed!

Holly: So today, we are talking about how to get past your addiction to busyness. And we are both kind of coming from different places on this, Joanna is further down the journey than I am, so I think this is going to be a really useful and juicy conversation because I think that a lot of people who listen to this are probably addicted to busyness even if they think they are not. As Joanna has just told me I am even though I think I am not! {laughing}

Joanna: I think it is important to note that we probably all, maybe most, but I am going to say all, because it sounds stronger {laughing}, we all have the same starting point and I think we all start with being addicted to busyness and glorifying busyness because of the way that we are brought up and because of the most recent stage of human history. It was what it was, and hard work was really important, and busyness was attached to hard work. So we kind of grew up with a lot of these ideas, so it is not just relevant for a few of us, I think most of us struggle with this or have struggled with this. it is like somehow all pervasive, right?

Holly: It is, it is. So, what is addiction to busyness?

Joanna: Well I think it is a unwillingness to be non-busy.

Holly: To be still, to be quiet.

Joanna: Or to just be not busy. I went to an event in London recently and I saw Denise Duffield Thomas speak about some things that she talks about in her fantastic book Chillpreneur, I will put in a plug for it here, because I have started reading it now and I think it is really, really great. One of the things that she says in her introduction is that she is, “an un-busy mum of three”, she said that she did it intentionally because whenever women are portrayed in the press, or anywhere, if being a mother is mentioned, it is mentioned as “a busy mum of three” or “a busy mum of two”. And so she wanted to make a point of being un-busy, she doesn’t want to identify with being a busy mum. And I thought that was kind of really cool, because it is a thing that we tend to assume, or people assume about us. And I know that Denise, for example, just consciously says, if someone says to her, “I know you are really busy so [something]…”. She will say “I am not”. Just consciously unstick yourself from that busyness and be willing to be something else. It doesn’t mean that you are still, it just means that you are not hurrying all the time.

Holly: And I hate hurrying all the time and you know that I have come from — a decade ago — with my first business being overworked, super-busy, burnout, and I think that’s where I really solidified this addiction to busyness because my business partner was a workaholic, was always portraying the image of someone who worked even harder than he actually did. It was like we weren’t allowed to say when we were taking a day off, or an afternoon off, or doing something else. We would always had to portray that image of working even harder than we worked, which was pretty hard. I came from that cultural tradition of being addicted to busyness, but that decade of my life really solidified it for me and I feel like I have spent the last eleven years really trying to unpick that.

Joanna: So do you think that hard work is the same as busyness though?

Holly: No, I don’t.

Joanna: No, right? I know loads of people who are super busy, but they are not actually creating anything of any value. Ok, but that is something different as well I suppose but staying busy is just using your time to do stuff.

Holly: And perhaps using your time to do stuff in an inefficient way.

Joanna: Yes, sometimes. But I think I it is this glorification of doing, right? Of producing, of being productive. This is the holy grail of everything to do more. Sure, smarter, in better way, but to produce more, to contribute more. I have a lot of clients who really struggle with this piece of not contributing, like who are you if you are not producing something? Who are you if you are not contributing to a collective, if you are not “pulling your weight”? So if you strip all that away and just stop, if you stop doing, then what do you have left?

Holly: You are lazy {laughing}.

Joanna: That was a rhetorical question but…

Holly: I couldn’t resist {Both: laughing}

Joanna: You are lazy, right? We are so scared of being judged as lazy.

Holly: I am so scared of judging myself as lazy and I don’t think I am, and I don’t think I ever have been lazy, but I am so afraid of it.

Joanna: But what if you were lazy. I am talking about Denise a lot today because I am reading her book and I am just learning a lot from her at the moment, but lazy is another word that she is reclaiming. She is describing the way she runs her multi-million dollar business as, “a little bit lazy” or a lot lazy in fact. So what is wrong with being lazy?

Holly: So to me, lazy has negative connotations, whereas if you were to say “relaxed” or “chilled”, like the title of her book “Chillpreneur”, that has positive connotations, but to me being lazy is someone who is not contributing to society, not working, not being productive…

Joanna: So? See this is the thing. Really? What is so bad really, what is so bad about being lazy?

Holly: I think if we go back to hunter-gatherer times, we all had to contribute, unless you were ill or had a broken leg, if you were a man, you had to hunt, if you were a woman you had to gather and if you were unwell maybe you had to herd the children, but you had to contribute to society.

Joanna: Yes, because otherwise everyone would die!

Holly: Exactly, so maybe this is where this comes from, maybe this is engrained from our ancestors that we have to contribute otherwise we are all going to fall apart.

Joanna: I think that is one aspect, but I think another thing that is involved here is the concept of self-worth and identity, because I think we tie it together with that. If you don’t contribute you are not a worthy person.

Holly: You are worthless!

Joanna: You are worthless, because we judge ourselves by how much we get done. This is a conversation that I have with clients all the time and I had a really interesting conversation with one of my clients recently where I was like: if you weren’t judging yourself on how much you got done today, what else could you judge your success or wellbeing by? And she said to me: I know that this isn’t the right answer, but I have to say that I think you are being ridiculous to even suggest that I could judge my success or wellbeing by anything else than how much I get done. {laughing}

Holly: Wow!

Joanna: It just shows that it is so all-pervasive, this is a woman who is super-conscious and super-intuitive, and super into energy work and all those things, and she is living her life judging herself by how much she gets done today. And we are all doing that in the end!

Holly: I do that too, when I have a day where I am like really focussed and I am burnt out by the end of the day because I have been hyper-focussed for seven hours, I feel like I had a good day, I got stuff done. I have reduced the amount of emails in my inbox, I did other work, I was very productive, and I feel really proud of myself. Whereas if I went out and went on a long walk in the forest and felt amazing, that’s another way to judge success because I felt amazing, but I don’t see that as…

Joanna: Right, so you have to train yourself to see that. I run a community called the soul-space, this is what we do, we choose an alignment focus that will help us to feel better, feel more how we want to feel. And you mention that you feel proud of yourself, one of my soulspace members recently chose the word proud, because she could not even fathom how she could possibly feel proud of herself until she achieved her next thing, what her current goal is. Yeah and that’s… and I was like: well, what if you played with being proud of yourself every day? She was like: clearly I need this, because that scares the crap out of me. And so we have to kind of retrain ourselves to choose different markers of success, so we are not judging ourselves by how much we get done, because honestly that isn’t so important in the grand scheme of things how many emails you answer today doesn’t really matter. What matters is that you are living a life in your fullest potential, that is meaningful and purposeful and gratifying – that’s what matters. So, as I said to you before we started recording, Holly, I don’t want to pretend that I have it all sorted, but I do feel like I got past a lot of this stuff. In the last two years I have retrained myself to feel good based on other things, or actually to feel good based on nothing at all {Holly: laughing}, to feel good just because I am me.

Holly: In your life.

Joanna: I am just me in my life and at the end of the day I no longer think about: ok I got this stuff done and therefore I had a good day, I just think that I had a good day. Sometimes that involves getting stuff done and sometimes it doesn’t, you know? It has been the most liberating thing that I have ever done for myself to kind of detach from this, and in a way it doesn’t mean that I give up on my goals because I am still super-driven and super-goal orientated. I also at some point noticed that I wasn’t enjoying the journey and as I always say, what’s the journey? The journey is your life! Why would you not aim to enjoy that!

Holly: Yes, your life isn’t just those moments when you realise that you have achieved the goal, it is everything in between we are not achieving the goals or not achieving the goals.

Joanna: Well yeah, in my experience and the experience of, I think, everybody I have ever worked with, when you are that focussed on goal achievement as a measure of your worth, then it will be never be enough. As soon as you achieve this goal, you will be like: yeah I have achieved this goal! And then you go onto the next goal and that’s it, because you are constantly living your life in the, “I don’t measure up” mode, because I haven’t achieved it, the it keeps moving, you basically keep moving the goalposts, today I want to answer emails, the next day you want to write a book, the next day you want to retrain as a nurse.

Holly: {laughing} Yeah that is not the career for me, I would be a terrible nurse. No but I think that is really interesting because I have just been doing my year-end review and planning my year for next year. And I made my list of goals, and some of them are goals, like getting my black belt next year, but a lot of them are just stuff that I want to experience, like courses that I am taking, like going on walks, and I have realised that it is a huge shift. Years before I would have been, “I am going to write x amount of books, and I going to get so many people sign up to my mailing list and so many people subscribe to my YouTube or whatever”, it would have been metric goals and now it is more like experience goals, or things that I want to make sure that I experience.

Joanna: Yes and that’s part of the shift right? Is to let yourself do more of the stuff that you actually enjoy. But the next step is to let yourself feel awesome and successful and all these things, even if you don’t achieve any of the things that you have labelled as “goals” and you only do the “experiences”. And that’s the hard bit, because we seem to need some sort of measure of self-worth, of contribution, we want to feel like we matter, like we are doing something useful with our time, that we are not wasting [time].

Holly: So why is addiction to busyness such a problem, do you think?

Joanna: It is a problem because it makes us feel like crap. For me, that is where the transformation started as well, where I was like: dude this is my life. And I am sitting here day after day, month after month, year after year, feeling really shitty about myself because I am not achieving these things. And I had to just talk to myself about like why I want to achieve these things and also whether I would be ok if I never achieve these things. That’s a question that I ask clients all the time as well, because that something that the personal development industry hides under the carpet and doesn’t want you to ask that question. I think it is super-important, what are you going to do if you don’t achieve these things, what are you going to do if you don’t write your books. What am I am going to do if I never move to Ireland? Am I going to miserable for the next 40 years of my life, because I didn’t achieve that one thing? No! When you look at it that way of course the answer is no.

Holly: But some people do. Some people don’t have the husband and kids or don’t get the big job or have these life achievements that they want and so they use that as an excuse to be miserable.

Joanna: That’s their choice and I don’t think that is a conscious choice, {Holly: No it is not} they are not saying, “I didn’t achieve this, and I now choose to be miserable”, they don’t understand that this is a choice, this is something that is really, really, important. I feel a bit silly, because I keep mentioning clients today, but I don’t find another word for it and I don’t want to mention names obviously. I was working with someone else last week and my heart literally swelled up when she left me this message, she said, “I get it”, this undesirable thing happened, so something happened to her, and she is like, “and I found myself thinking, I choose not to be miserable about this. I choose to feel something else. I think I finally get it that it is a choice, that we can’t control the things that happen, but we can always control what we do with that.” So, if you feel like you are failing at business and you feel really crappy about yourself, but you could make a different choice, you could learn to be happier about your life in general, or not base everything on something that is results-orientated.

Holly: Exactly, I think a lot of times, we also choose busyness to keep our minds occupied so that we don’t think about all the shit that we have going on in our lives that makes us unhappy.

Joanna: I have heard so many people say that they are afraid to do introspection stuff because their exact words were things like, “I am afraid of what I am going to find”.

Holly: Exactly, but the thing is that stuff is there effecting you, even though you are not looking at it in the face, it has still got that undercurrent of shit that is crapping on your life {laughing}.

Joanna: Wow we are using some great language today, please don’t quote us! {laughing}

Holly: {laughing} These are super profound images! You know what I mean, I have been there, I have been in a place where my life was really, really, dark and bad and I was choosing not to do anything about it because I was too scared to do anything about it and that was the best that I could do at the time. And I kept myself very, very busy because it was so much easier to stay busy than to look at the crap that I wasn’t doing anything about in my life, which was the more important stuff, but I was looking at the less important stuff because that was easier.

Joanna: Yes, it is easier, and I have been there too, loads of times so I totally, totally, get it, but it is also valued as more. So for example, I have mentioned my jigsaw puzzles several times on this podcast, but I am going to do that again, because I think it is a really good example because it is a hobby that takes up a relative amount of time to do a puzzle. My mum once was, “how do you have time to do all these puzzles, shouldn’t you be really busy?” {laughing}

Holly: {laughing} Shouldn’t you be really busy?

Joanna: I can’t remember exactly what she said, but I do, I have a lot of things on my plate, but, for me, it was part of the life that I wanted to create, was to have this space to do these puzzles and I was willing at that time to be ok with people’s judgement, that I am not ambitious enough, or I could be doing more in my work or creating something more, or spending time on something that is valuable.

Holly: But also, when we give ourselves permission to do the puzzle or whatever, that is resting our brain.

Joanna: Yes it is, and for a while my puzzle was the only thing that would rest my brain actually, because it was the only thing that took up some kind of mental energy so that I wasn’t thinking about other things, but we don’t want to fall into the trap of making it about some other kind of result either. Just doing it because it is nice, because you enjoy it. You know Ann Wilson, the Wealth Chef, she loves to knit, or crochet, one of them I can’t remember, but she doesn’t need a thousand scarfs, so what she does, she goes through a project, she knits something and then unravels it and uses the wool for something else. And she says that is is a really really good exercise in not being attached to the outcome and doing something for the pure enjoyment of the process. It is very interesting, who would be willing to do that? It doesn’t have to be just in knitting, the puzzle is the same thing, as soon as I finish the puzzle I destroy it and take up something else. So it is the same sort of thing. But where else in our lives are we willing to be that detached from an outcome and just really sink into the process of just creating.?

Holly: That would be like writing a book and then deleting the file {aghh!} {laughing}

Joanna: {laughing} Right, not quite there yet are we?

Holly: That is true enlightenment! {laughing}

Joanna: That seems silly to…

Holly: But it is an extreme example of what you just said, perhaps an extreme example but yeah.

Joanna: So for me, over the years, when I started my business for many years I thought my work was about creating more success and manifesting greatness and all these things and over the past two years, or so, I realised that my work and everything to do with being soul smart is about, yes, having goals, because I am ambitious and driven and the people I work with are also ambitious and driven but letting yourself enjoy the journey. So not choosing, because a lot of people think that if you take your foot of the gas you are going to stop, nothing will ever get done, you won’t ever achieve anything. You want to achieve those things, you want to write your books, you want to take those walks, you want to run the marathon, or whatever it is that you want to experience, but I think it doesn’t have to be an either/or you can have both. If you consciously choose to yes have your goals but also commit to enjoying every single day of your journey, in my experience it hasn’t hurt my goal experience at all.

Holly: It has probably improved it, but how did you get to that point where you had that balanced between enjoying everything single day and still working towards your goals, how did that happen?

Joanna: Slowly! It happened intentionally, it happened because I had to unravel success from money at the start. My business wasn’t going anywhere, or it felt like it want going anywhere, but I was committed to it, and I was like: well I need to have okay days, I can’t be crying about this every day, what kind of life is that? Why am I choosing to be involved in something that is bringing me so much misery and pain? {laughing} So I was like: all right do I want to give up the business? No. But I also don’t want to be crying about it, so my only choice is to focus on enjoying my days, on doing the things in my work that feel good and enjoying myself whether there are external markers of success or not.

Holly: So did you do something to remind yourself of that, because it is hard to break habits. Did you put a sign that was like, ‘enjoy the day!’?

Joanna: Not that aggressively. This is the process that we go through in the soulspace every single month. Basically you have your vision of what you want your life to look like and every month you choose an aspect of that to align with. And so, if you are in there I can remind you and keep people accountable, otherwise find ways to keep it front of mind. You can get into the habit of putting it onto your daily to-do list, in the soulspace we do vision boards and collages to encapsulate that energy. We stay committed because we want to stay committed. You have to trick yourself at the start to keep it at the front of your mind but eventually you become really committed to feeling good and feeling how you want to feel, and it becomes a lot more natural. So, actually, when I first started and it is coming back to me, when I first started I had a daily practice of saying all my intentions out loud, and so I started my days by saying how I feel in this new reality that I wanted to step into and that kept me on track. What it did, because I repeated the same phrases about what described my reality every single day they got stuck in my head and then when something opposite happened later, I was like: oh, but…ideal clients come to me easily, or whatever it was; or I don’t know what this is because my bank account expands as if by magic. {laughing} I wasn’t trying it is just that they were in my head, those phrases that I wanted to experience, in my head and so they kept coming back.

Holly: Yeah, okay, and also I think getting really clear on how you want to feel in your life, like Danielle La Porte talks about your core desired feelings, know how you want to feel, what are those feelings?

Joanna: Yeah and you choose one at a time because I think this is how my own process really evolved, my super-successful-you process that I teach evolved, because I want to feel lots of different things, preferably all at the same time within the space of one day. {Both: laughing} I want to feel inspired and I want to feel loved and I want to feel important, there are loads of things, calm, at peace, and joyful and abundant and all sorts of other things, so then, what do you do with that? The way that you create a quantum shift, a quantum leap is by addressing the small things, so you take one of those alignment focuses at a time, one at a time and you will see before you know it that your life is changing as you start stepping into a totally different energy.

Holly: And I think for me, one thing that really helped me with that was earlier this year, when I had a session with Fabeku, I did his super-power session and we drilled that down to what I hadn’t realised, but now I can see it in so many areas of my life, is the thing that I am chasing and the thing that I help people with, is finding and experiencing expansive joy. And that was the feeling that I got when I would do a long-distance trail, that was the feeling I got from the house in Avebury, that is the feeling that I get when I do so many things, it is expansive joy. So having that word now helps me to tap into that feeling.

Joanna: Sometimes it is a word and sometimes it is…one of my soul-spacers has an image of a ballerina, and it is not that she is going to take up ballet right? It is just that image encapsulated what she wanted to experience, that grace, that commitment, that strength, that beauty and she got that image from her subconscious during one of the processes that we did. Sometimes we tend to overthink these things and of course, when you come at it with the conscious mind, everybody just wants more money, more success, it always boils down to the same thing. So how do you take that for yourself and how do you actually come up with that image or that word that will really spark something in you personally because it is so subjective?

Holly: For me I made a screen saver for my computer with images that trigger that feeling for me and that really helped me to tap into that feeling.

Joanna: Well, there you go you ask me how to keep that focus, but you have the tools, right?

Holly: Yes I have the tools to remember my focus on expansive joy, but I don’t, or a I probably have the tools, or I am not using the tools, to remind myself that it is okay to not be busy all the time.

Joanna: But if you have an expansive joy screen saver does working through 1000 emails in ten minutes make you feel expansive joy?

Holly: No! It makes me feel proud of myself for being productive, which is not my core, desired, feeling.

Joanna: So that’s the thing, then it is a choice, one of the things that I have to unravel, well I had to with myself and I have to unravel with people that I work with is that willingness aspect, you have to be willing to do it a different way and you have to be willing to feel good and people think that they don’t deserve to feel good because they haven’t achieved all these things. They think that allowing themselves to feel good is self-indulgent, or lazy, or whatever else they are judging as negative, right? So you have to unravel these things first because you are not going to even notice your screensaver. Until you unravel all those bits underneath.

Holly: Yes so we are surrounded by all this hard-work ethic, working hard and hustle; hustle is such a word for this world that we live in. And it is seen as a good thing by most people, I think, so how do we disengage from that?

Joanna: [People] see it is as a good thing and people see it as necessary, so the first thing is to think about what you want without hustle. Like really deeply, sit yourself down and journal and write about it, answer this question from the depths of your Soul, because the first answer that comes to you might not be the one that it is actually in there. Is it possible to create something without hustle, it isn’t possible to create something without work, this is a whole conversation without, we all got on the Internet a little bit caught up with this idea of ease and effortlessness, but I have heard said so many times, it is not effort-none; you just can’t sit there and expect everything to come to you, some action is required, I think in the physical space you have to take some action to put things into action. Some effort right, at what point does effort become hustle, that’s also something to explore, what’s the different for you? I don’t think anybody minds working hard for something that they really believe in.

Holly: Or something that they enjoy, I can do a Workcation and sit down and crank out a few thousand words of a book, and it is absolutely joyful for me, but it is work.

Joanna: Yeah, it is, what do you consider effort and what do you consider hustle? They are very different energies, it is absolutely worth it to put in effort, it is gratifying to put in effort towards something that is beautiful and brings you joy. That’s not the same as hustle energy right?

Holly: Yes, exactly.

Joanna: But I think like all these words get mixed up for people and they end up saying: I am against hustle and then they hustle.

Holly: It is because they don’t have other role models, there are very few people like Denise who are willing to say: I have an easy life. She works obviously, she didn’t just sit on her arse and get where she is today, but she is willing to say, I am not a busy mum.

Joanna: I was talking to my mum who had gotten into this conversation with one of my aunts and they were basically trying to trump the other one about who had the harder life. And she was telling me this story and I said: why are you worrying about this, why do you want to be the one who has the hardest life? I am going to say that I have the easiest life and none of you can beat me.

Holly: How did they respond to that?

Joanna: It was a bit of a shock; nobody had ever said that to them. We are so unwilling to admit that our life is good, to go up to someone and say: my life is really good, I am finding it really easy to do this. That’s not what other people value, people value struggle, even when you think about stories that make it through the ages, the hero’s journey, there is a struggle in there, the arc, the storytelling arc, there needs to be some kind of struggle, it is hard but in the end even though it is hard, you will win.

Holly: Yes, it is like those rags to riches stories that you get online, with those online entrepreneurs: I was on welfare, I had nothing in my kitchen, my kids were going to be taken away and then I discovered the power webinars, Instagram, Facebook groups, whatever, [insert magic] and now all of a sudden I am a multi-millionaire.

Joanna: That’s what people want right? When you tell a story of when I was pretty well off, and now I am better well off and my life is pretty easy, it doesn’t have the same oomph to it.

Holly: It doesn’t and it is so interesting that you say that because Kate Northrup wrote that book, Money, A Love Story, and I remember going on to review that I book because I like it and found it really useful, but all the reviews were like: this woman didn’t have it that hard, her mum is a famous author, yes she got into bad debt and she had to get herself out of it, but really her life wasn’t that bad. And I thought: why does that invalidate her story? Her story was still useful, you don’t have to be homeless to make your story useful.

Joanna: Or to have the justification for achieving something and feeling proud of yourself. So those people are saying that she said that she achieved something when clearly she didn’t because it wasn’t good enough because she already had such a high start in life.

Holly: {joking} Exactly, all she had was credit card debt, it is not like she was starving…

Joanna: I think it is interesting to note that in us as well, we are more impressed by that transformation, we are also expecting that kind of transformation from ourselves, we all have a story, most of us have had some horrible things happen, we all have that stuff, but that doesn’t mean that we are more or less worthy.

Holly: Why do you think it is so hard for us to say it is not hard for us? And as I am asking the question I recognise the fact that I had it hard but now I am in a really good spot in life, I haven’t achieved all the things that I want to achieve, I don’t have all the things that I want to have, but I am in a pretty good spot. Why do you think it is so hard for us to say this? I am saying that I am in a pretty good spot, but honestly, things are pretty good, and it is so hard for me to say that.

Joanna: Why?

Holly: Because I feel like I don’t want to trigger people’s shit, I don’t want to trigger people if they are having a shitty time and they are thinking: look at her and her fucking good life.

Joanna: It seems unfair, right? We both have Aspergers and that fairness is really important to both of us, maybe that is why we’re having this conversation about why it is so hard. It is not fair that my life is so good and your life sucks.

Holly: But also, I have worked hard to get where I am.

Joanna: See, you are putting the “work” word.

Holly: Thank you for pointing it out, because I feel that I had to.

Joanna: I said that, but what I thought in my head was I worked hard to get where I am and so that justifies it.

Holly: But if we hadn’t worked hard and we had just been given what we have got, how would that be different? The world is not going to fall apart. Some people do get trust funds, inheritances and win the lottery, they don’t do much, they just exist, or buy a lottery ticket and get stuff given to them. Is that so bad?

Joanna: Oh my god, I have so much judgement in my head right now.

Holly: Okay, good, so.

Joanna: So definitely something for me to look at.

Holly: And if you have judgement look at that. Really, it depends you can get that trust fund, you can get that inheritance and do awesome things, not save the world but you could make the world a better place or you could buy yourself 75 Mercedes and drive around in a new car every day of the week.

Joanna: Which is wrong, right?

Holly: How wrong is it? It sounds so indulgent but is it hurting the world, you are giving all the Mercedes car people jobs, I don’t know…

Joanna: We are starting to get a bit ranty, I think, it is an am emotional thing, I think it is wrong because I think there are better things you can do with that money.

Holly: Yeah, absolutely.

Joanna: …than buy 75 Mercedes. That’s not to say that you can’t do something for yourself either, maybe we need to talk about that…

Holly: maybe that’s a whole different thing.

Joanna: So how do you give yourself permission to be unbusy, not just to rest. Again, we are living in this world of duality and there is this tendency to see things as either/or, so either you are working or your are resting; either you are being productive, or you are being lazy.

Holly: For me that is really hard, I just went through that because I had a really busy month and a half, with a ton of stuff, which I have already talked about on my podcast and to everyone on my mailing list knows I was so busy and I hate being busy and it was all good stuff, that’s the thing it was such good stuff and all crammed into a month and a half and it was really hard. And so I came out of that, and there was a week when I was thinking this is the date when I am going to get back on track, and I am going to get my routine back and I am going to do stuff, and then when I got to that week I just crashed, I had no energy, I did some stuff but I had to give myself permission to just sit in bed and read a book because I couldn’t focus on getting stuff done.

Joanna: And that in itself is fine but what I think is not fine is tat you are really judging that.

Holly: I totally judged myself, I felt so guilty. I gave myself permission to rest, I gave myself permission to not be busy, I gave myself permission to read a book, but the whole time I felt guilty about it and that’s the problem.

Joanna: You felt like you shouldn’t have been doing that, which kind of negates the positive energy coming from giving yourself that space. I think it becomes easier when you do it more regularly.

Holly: It is like building a muscle.

Joanna: Yes it really is. I find when I first started being conscious of giving myself space and what I needed, I would watch two hours of television in the middle of the day,, with everything else that I have to be doing, I thought that was insane, but then I was like: oh my God but this is clearly what I need. That was exactly what I wanted to do, I thought : okay this is going to be forever, and it wasn’t, I haven’t watched to during the day for about three years. I thought this was going to be my thing, it totally was not. I make sure that I read a bit of my book each day, even if it is just for ten minutes. I make sure that I get outside most days, so it makes it a lot easier to give yourself that space if you build it into your day.

Holly: Yes it does, and give yourself reminders, because for example, an example of what not to do, I used to eat three meals a day like normal people and I would always block out my meals in my calendar and I would have an hour blocked out for lunch every day, and I would rest and make a nice salad, it was really good break from the day. But since I started doing intermittent fasting and I no longer eat breakfast and lunch I deleted those meals from my calendar and now I don’t take a break in the middle of the day. I think that is another reason why I get to the end of the day, I have an extra hour in my work-day, because I didn’t have lunch, and I am burnout a lot of days.

Joanna: Yes so you really need to I think envision and spend some time envisioning what your life looks like the way you want it and when you have arrived, what do things look like, and then align with that, right? And that is what I have done with myself and that is what I take people through, in my opinion it is the only way. But in this case it is the only way, we don’t need a quick fix, that we need to keep making different choices and taking different sorts of action, otherwise we have more of what we currently have.

Holly: Yes, absolutely.

Joanna: There needs to be some progress and stuff going on but at the same time, I don’t think we can achieve anything that really matters unless we enjoy the journey.

Holly: Yes, I agree, I agree. However, one of the things that I fear I think and why it is so hard for me to give myself guilt free un-busy weeks or days, is I think, like you said, that when you were watching tv every day you thought that was going to be the thing, I am afraid that I am going to be: okay I am going to have a rest all week and not be busy, and then I am going to slide down into this abyss of nothingness and not doing anything and being super lazy.

Joanna: I don’t think that’s possible.

Holly: I agree, I know that is not going to happen because I can’t function that way, I wouldn’t be able to survive. I think that is the fear in the back of my mind and that is the voice that keeps me on track with being busy so that I don’t do lazy forever.

Joanna: So in my experience, I have given myself loads of space to be lazy. In my experience, I got to a point where I was pretty rested and pretty relaxed about things and it was time to start having goals again. So I went through a whole period where I didn’t even set goals, I just went with the flow and did a bit of this and a bit of that and I wasn’t very driven, even though that is my personality, but I have been driven for years, sometimes you need a break, right? So there was a point where I thought to myself okay, I think I need to be a bit harsher sometimes, because it is almost like, I remember my guides saying to me: you have now learned to give yourself space but don’t use it as an excuse not to do the stuff that makes you uncomfortable. After you learn to give yourself space and permission guilt-free and and all that stuff you need to learn that discernment between when time off and un busy time is what you need versus you are just making excuses because there is something that you are resisting which you know will bring you to the next level then you are not doing it. Then that is an opportunity to get to know yourself and that line and where it lies for you a little bit better.

Holly: Okay, how do you tell the difference?

Joanna: Intuitively and again it is a muscle, sometimes I can really feel, and sometimes I think it can be misleading as we are very good at tricking ourselves.

Holly: Exactly, so how do you know when you need to push yourself a little.

Joanna: When progress is being made. Like everyone listening to this podcast I also know when something different from my life, my life is very good, and I want some different things. I want to experience some different things and when I see that nothing is happening because I am doing my puzzle all the time.

Holly: You are achieving lots of puzzles; you are solving lots of puzzles!

Joanna: You can feel when enough is enough, you can actually feel that switch to: okay, now I have the mental space to tackle this, it comes with being intentional about your life and being super-aware about what is happening. As you are, and a lot of our listeners aim to be, to be really aware and conscious of why they are making certain choices and what beliefs are coming up and all that kind of stuff and it just comes with that and you just get better and better. And honestly, you are not going to spend three years doing puzzles, maybe you will spend three days and then by like: okay I have spent three days on this now, do I need to start a new one or do I need to do some work?

Holly: Exactly.

Joanna: And it is a natural choice to say I would quite like to do the puzzle because it is easier, and this is actually a really important thing, it is not a trick, it is how I frame things, is the concept of choice. Sometimes I feel like what I really want to do is to do a puzzle or start reading my book, or whatever it is, but what I choose to do is to tackle this thing that I have been resisting which is aligned with the version of me that I want to become and the reality that I want to experience.

Holly: Right.

Joanna: So eventually you are going to choose for either staying in place or the next thing, or your next level. There is no shaming here, it is totally okay, to choose for where you are, it is okay to say, I have zero interest in moving forward today, I just want to read my book. And that is perfectly okay, you can do that for your entire life, we put such pressure on ourselves to create more, to create something different. If you are happy with what you have you are fine.

Holly: You are good.

Joanna: Great, well done! But if you are happy and you would also live to have something more or something different then make sure you are choosing for. And that is the alignment stuff, right, that is where we choose to feel proud of ourselves even where we haven’t achieved what we want to achieve because we know that highest potential version of us and that is what we are choosing for.

Holly: It is all a balance.

Joanna: Knowing where you are going, having a vision and having goals ,but more importantly allowing yourself to enjoy the journey because again the journey isn’t random things, the journey is your life. A lot of times when we achieve the ultimate end it is actually going to be pretty ultimate! {laughing} So let’s not rush toward that you know.

Holly: Yes! We never know when we are going to die but let’s assume we are going to live long lives Because otherwise how do you live your life? But why would we rush towards that unless we are in a bad place and want to rush towards that.

Joanna: That’s the thing we say all these things and the journey and this and that but when you stop and think about it is your life, your every day life is the actual journey , why would not choose to enjoy that, it makes good sense to enjoy the journey.

Holly: Although as you say that, people come to mind who are just absolutely miserable and seem to enjoy being miserable.

Joanna: Because those people haven’t yet realised that they have a choice and that is part of personal development our listeners are into, there is a choice there, you can be happy, or your can be miserable in all sorts of situations.

Holly: Exactly, you don’t have to have everything perfect.

Joanna: All right that is a good place to end on, you don’t have to have achieved everything in order to feel good about yourself and feel happy.

Holly: Yes you can feel happy today. So thank you for this, and I look forward to our next one.

Joanna: Yes, definitely. {ENDS}