We live pretty busy lives – I get it.
I don’t know about you, but as a small business owner, I always feel like I have to be doing something in order to feel like I’m actually doing something productive for my business (e.g. I need to constantly be thinking of new content, avenues to market to my audience, ways to build my clientele, things I can improve and automate, etc). Not only that, as a human being, I feel extremely UNCOMFORTABLE doing nothing, and I frequently catch myself reaching for the phone and mindlessly scrolling through my Facebook and Instagram feed to kill some time whilst I’m waiting for my coffee or waiting for anything in general.
The fact of the matter is this, we will instinctively do ANYTHING to avoid doing nothing – perhaps it’s out of fear, because when we may be forced to confronted with things about ourselves and our life that we are avoiding, or perhaps because doing nothing is just unnatural, and we feel guilty for taking a pause because there’s so many other things that require our attention.
Over the past 2 months, I’ve been learning about why sometimes doing nothing is the best thing for you. Have you ever tried so hard to get things done and yet things just don’t seem to be moving forward at all? It’s like you’re pushing a big rock up a hill – putting so much exertion into moving that damn rock but it ain’t budging! Obviously if you’re doing all that, you’re eventually going to be spent – physically, emotionally and mentally.
When you’re exhausted or tired, you really can’t do much. For me, the period of nothingness was forced onto me and I didn’t have a say! Usually, to prepare myself for the day, I would set my alarm for 6 am. I’d jump out of bed, meditate for about 30 mins and then do yoga for another 30-40 mins. I had been doing this for quite a while. This time around, I would sleep and not get up until 7am and my body was screaming “do not do yoga at all”! It was around this time that I had made the decision to start to work in Wollongong, so I was trying to do all I could to get things running smoothly from Day 1. Having been away on so many courses during the past few months, I also had a lot of expenses to pay and I wasn’t getting as many clients as I had liked too so you can imagine what my brain was doing “You’re doing something wrong and you better get out and do stuff in order to make ends meet” – hence adding more stress!
With the forced rest (and with the scoldings from my own spirit guides for not listening to them), I had to surrender completely to what was going on in my life. So that meant no exercise or anything like that for 2 months, and not to work on building my business because, I had, in their words “done everything you needed to do“, even though I hadn’t felt like I did because I wasn’t seeing results (that’s my over analytical logical brain for you). It meant I had to completely trust that everything was going to be OK, and whilst I struggled with this for a while, I got tired of the struggling and just went “Ok – I’m going to go with the flow and things better get better!!!“
And you know what? It did. Things got IMMENSELY better. It wasn’t overnight, but over the next few weeks, things just started to fall in place… all without me having to do anything. I was literally thinking “Can it REALLY be this simple?! I just have to surrender and let things happen?” and the simple answer is, YES!
Now here’s a caveat, my feeling is that there needs to be a good balance between doing something, and doing nothing. So things won’t necessarily just happen to you if you actually sit on your ass and don’t do anything to allow it to happen, if that makes sense. It’s more of a, do something, even if it’s small, and then sit back and wait.
For me, because things just flowed and were effortless, I was less stressed out, a lot more happier and felt on top of the world. If you read my post last month regarding gratitude, I was extremely grateful for all the gifts I was receiving, and because I was, that meant that things got even better!
From a physical perspective, if we equate “doing nothing” to “resting”, then that in itself says a lot about why it’s important to actually do nothing for a while. If we don’t have enough time to rest or sleep, our cells and our body doesn’t have enough time to actually repair and rejuvenate itself before we pummel it again the next day. If we keep going on like this, your body will have no chance but to force you to listen to it (e.g. by experiencing fatigue or being in pain).
So give yourself permission to do nothing, and see what benefits (and there are LOTS) that you will reap from it.
