When exactly did it happen?
That moment…
When did we stop CHOOSING our lives, and begin SURRENDERING to them.
Half-living each day as a reaction to the constant barrage of never-ending to-do lists, social obligations, work functions, status updates, and more? Pummeled by reactive, autopilot busyness, rather than living life as an expression of who we really are. Of what matters most. Of that delicious, brilliant, soulful, sexy and vital part of us that yearns not only to see the light of day, but also to be seen. To be heard. To be relished, loved, embraced, held. Celebrated.
When was the moment…
…when we walked away from what we once dreamed of becoming and the life we once dreamed of living. Ceding the quest to “craft” an existence with intention to breathlessly try not to crumble, while we do all we can to not fall too far behind. Getting ahead? In our dreams.
That’s the question we’re exploring today, and more importantly, what can we do about it? How can we close the gap between a life of reactivity, one we feel like we don’t own, into a life of agency, intentionality, possibility, and ease, in this very special episode we’re calling the Unbusy Manifesto.
And, by the way, in case you’d like to spend more time reading what you’re about to experience, I’ve posted a version of it over on my Awake at the Wheel newsletter.
Now, let’s get busy getting unbusy.
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Episode Transcript:
Jonathan Fields: [00:00:01] So when exactly did it happen? You know that moment? When did we stop choosing our lives and begin letting others take the wheel? Half living each day as a reaction to the constant barrage of never ending to do lists and social obligations and work functions and status updates and feeds and more pummeled by reactive autopilot busyness. Rather than living life as an expression of who we really are, of what matters most of that delicious, brilliant, soulful, sexy and vital part of us that yearns to not only see the light of day, but also to be seen, to be heard, to be relished and loved, embraced, held, celebrated. Even when was the moment when we walked away from what we once dreamed of becoming, and the life we once dreamed of living, ceding the quest to craft an existence with intention and breathlessly try not to crumble while we do all we can to just not fall too far behind. Getting ahead. That is something for our dreams. That is the question that we’re exploring today. And more importantly, what can we do about it? How can we actually close the gap between a life of reactivity when we feel like we don’t own into a life of agency and intentionality and possibility and ease? In this very special episode we’re calling the Unbusy Manifesto. And by the way, in case you’d like to spend more time reading what we’re about to experience, I’ve also posted a version of this over on my Awake at the Wheel newsletter, and you’ll be able to find a link to that in the show notes. If you’d just like to linger and spend more time with it. Now let’s get busy getting unbusy. I’m Jonathan Fields and this is Good Life Project.
[00:01:58] Okay, so back to that question. When was the moment when we walked away from what we once dreamed of being and becoming, and the life we once dreamed of living, ceding that quest to craft an existence with intention to breathlessly try just not to crumble. While all we can do is fall not too far behind. When was that moment? The truth is, for most of us, there wasn’t a moment. At least not a single moment. That’s kind of what makes it so insidious. So maybe if there was a big moment, a big decision, a single happening where we were presented with a choice to live reactively or intentionally, we’d have seen it coming and actually knowing that it was time to choose rather than what almost always happens. We just relent, we react, we give up control and micro-doses, feeding ourselves to the voracious demands and appetites of pace without purpose, one teeny, seemingly harmless morsel at a time until we wake up years later. And that’s if we wake up, only to discover that we are. We’re suffering deeply, often silently, but in a very real way, breathlessly busy, without a pause and without a cause, and not acting with intention, but really reacting from the moment we open our eyes to the moment we lay our heads fitfully down on the pillow and increasingly we find ourselves.
Jonathan Fields: [00:03:41] It’s a it’s a heavy word, but I feel like we find ourselves, on some level, a bit wrecked, living with what I would consider an undiagnosed condition, something I like to shorthand as reactive life syndrome or RLS for short. So everything would be better, we think if we could just get a moment, just get an hour, just get a day, just get a week to breathe, to choose. That’s what vacation is for, isn’t it? And yet the pace that we’ve surrendered to continues to perpetually hold us hostage. And we just don’t ever find a way out. We may even tell ourselves, hey, it’s not so bad. There’s so many good things happening in my life. I mean, look at this. It’s great. Look at this. It’s great. Look at this. It’s great. But is that truth-speaking, or is it justification for a sense of futility, even if it’s not hit a breaking point yet? We’ve got to ask ourselves at some point, am I okay with where this seems to be heading? If I plot this out another six months, another year, another five years, another decade, am I okay with where that is heading, because with every waking moment, we are creating a trajectory with our lives.
Jonathan Fields: [00:05:04] There’s no sideways. What we feel as nagging now will eventually become gnawing and left to fester will take us down and eventually out. It’s just a matter of time. So left untreated, the seeds of the condition always mushroom into that full-blown reactive life syndrome. That RLS that starts to dominate you in ways that you never actually understood. And we end up being dragged through life rather than living it. The truth is, for most of us, it’s also not really our fault, at least up until now. Once you become aware of the condition. So how could we have known that there was something we could do about it when we didn’t know that there was something that we were struggling with? One that has been controlling our nearly every move for years, maybe even for decades. It’s largely just the culture that we’ve been brought up in, an ethos that says, come on. Like, this is what it is to be an adult. This is just reality. At a certain point, you just kind of give up. You give in to the notion that, oh, okay, that’s fine. Right? That’s your job. It’s what it means to be a grown up. Surrender your identity and ability to craft your life in a way that fills you up to the will of the reactive busyness gods instead of hitting pause, diagnosing and treating this condition.
Jonathan Fields: [00:06:30] We’re told to just deal with it. It’s not something to be fixed. It’s just the way things are. And even worse, individuals and organizations, all too often they wear it as a badge of honor. Reactive busyness. Pace without purpose, taking on more than the next person, without regard to whether it really matters, even, is how we’re taught that we, quote, get ahead. That is how you succeed. Except it’s a lie. It’s a lie. For us as individuals, it’s a lie. For our employers, for our teams, for our organizations, for leaders. It doesn’t work for anyone. Reactive life syndrome is not a badge of honor. It is a symptom of giving up. If you’ve listened this far, so it’s a safe bet that you have experienced loss on some level. And I’m wondering if maybe it’s time for a little bit of a wake-up call. Thus, the Unbusy manifesto that we are diving into right now. So if we continue to live in a way where we just relent, we react rather than reclaim that choice and everything that flows from it. The continued blunting of everything that truly matters from this moment forward is more on us than it used to be. To be clear, every person’s life is different. We all have different histories and limitations, resources and abilities, and very real-life demands. The playing field was never even and it never will be.
Jonathan Fields: [00:08:15] And it’s not today. So this isn’t about ignoring those very real-life conditions. Life delivers different doses of hard to different people at different times, just as it delivers different doses of ease to different people at different times. This is about owning it all. Letting go of any sense of shame or futility for what brought you to this moment, and just getting honest and acknowledging the past and the role that it has served in getting you to this place. And in a lot of ways, it’s probably served a very positive purpose. You’re here, you’re alive. You’re probably thriving in a lot of different ways in your life. It’s not all negative. The question is, at what cost and do you want to continue to pay that price? The price of grace and ease instead of just sinking deeper into grind and hard. So then we ask ourselves, well, okay, so looking at my life, well, where do I have agency in my life? And what resources, even the smallest ones, do I have access to? How can I step out of the confines of reactive busyness and into the spaciousness of a more embodied, proactive presence? What if, no matter our past, we actually welcome both the responsibility and the possibility to step into a place of awareness and intention to kind of switch the flip from being controlled to being in control, to free ourselves from the weight of reactive life syndrome.
Jonathan Fields: [00:09:56] The pivot to possibility is is a real moment for us. So what if, for the first time in a long time, we open to the possibility of a different reality, one where we reclaimed and crafted each day rather than reacted and just gave up our moments to the never-ending demands of others? What if we bridge the gap from reactive and repressed to intentional and alive? What if, to whatever extent, is real and alive for us in our lives, we chose what matters? We set the pace. We decided who to work with, who to play with, who to create, with, who to partner with, who to love, who to give to, who to be in service of and receive from. What if we crafted and celebrated each moment not from a place of desperately reactive and futile frenzy or a grasping need to control everything, but simply of grounded intention, of lightness, of ease, of joy. What if, instead of feeling like life is dragging you into a perpetually frenetic spin of breathless oblivion, you could choose to step into the parts of life that make you come alive and in a way that let you feel the sweetness and the space of it, rather than the brutalizing contraction and pace of it. What if you could just breathe again? Not just now, but tomorrow and the next day. And the next. Moving through life with a sense of not only purpose and connection, but grace and ease.
Jonathan Fields: [00:11:37] And what if today was the day that you rose up and proclaimed to yourself and to the world? Maybe if you’re bold enough to do that. Oh hell no. The past is the past. Yes, but I will not let myself be a victim or really give up the balance of my life to a soul-crushing, reactive busyness and a frantic, purposeless pace, only to watch the life I know is possible pass me by while I remain buried under the weight of a thousand to do’s that matter to everyone but me. So there’s just got to be another way. And the truth is, there is another way. And it tends to start not with action taking, but on a deeper level on the level of beliefs. Because until we shift our beliefs to really support a different reality, we’ll never do what’s necessary to get there. So here’s what I’ve come to believe. This is a little bit of a creed. This is my. This is my unbusy creed. Number one, growing up doesn’t mean giving up. Number two, before you can rise up, you need to wake up. Number three, you are not a reaction to other people’s needs. Number four, life begins when you are unapologetically you. Number five being of service doesn’t mean being a doormat. Six. Self-care is the beating heart of other care. Seven. This moment seeds every moment.
Jonathan Fields: [00:13:24] Eight. Intention. Overrides. Reaction. Nine. Vulnerability is a virtue. And ten. Meaning matters and so do people. So these beliefs. These values, if you will, they till the soil of a more intentional life well lived. They anchor the path to a cure for reactive busyness, a way back from being busy without a cause, pummeled by pace and ravaged by reactivity. But in order to manifest it, to make this cure start to come alive in you, to inoculate ourselves against reinfection, we need to play a part in our own recovery. So it’s not enough to just believe in these things. It’s not enough to just know and nod your head and say, well, yeah, heck yeah. Like I want to write that down. Let me put that on my socials. And that’s not what it’s about. It’s about believing in them. It’s about embodying them. It’s about owning them and saying, yeah, hell yeah. This is what I know to be true. And then and then Building upon that belief as a basis for action to take the first step in our journey back to an intentional, a connected, a vital, meaningful, lit-up life. So how have I come to these ideas? Because in the not too distant past, and probably it will be again in the future. I have lived this life over and over and over, sometimes to such extreme detriment that it led me to severe repercussions because I was you.
Jonathan Fields: [00:15:21] If you’re thinking this is the state of my life, and over the years, much as I know that you know, this story ends, I’ve let myself dip back into reactive life syndrome and felt the crushing burden of it every single time I found myself there. And like you, I’m a human being trying to just build what I thought was a a fruitful life, a thriving life, a satisfying life, a successful life. In an earlier incarnation, I found myself earning a great living, having a power job on track to do big things and one of the most prestigious law firms in New York. This was like nine past lives ago now, but it is so still alive in me and visceral because of what it did to me in that career. I found that my body actually gave out, sending me into emergency surgery. My immune system shut down and a baseball sized infection literally ate a hole through my intestines from the outside in. And when your body rejects your career, you kind of have to listen at that point. It was one of my big wake-up calls, the one that eventually sent me out of the practice of law and deep into a more blended and holistic fascination with human potential and the art of process of creation, and reconnecting me with the soul of being a maker, an entrepreneurship that has always been a part of me.
Jonathan Fields: [00:16:50] And along the way I became a husband. I became a dad. I was fortunate enough to build and sell several companies once I started to take more control. I taught yoga to everyone from celebrities to neighborhood parents, mindfulness to CEOs and all the yada yada. I’ve been gifted with the opportunity to write and speak and host conversations with wow, it’s it’s it’s got to be somewhere around a thousand luminaries right here in Good Life Project. over a dozen years and advise everyone from founders and CEOs to artists, makers and a stunning global community of humans just trying to do work that makes them come alive and live their best lives. With the launch of the Sparketypes a chunk of years back, I think it was 2018 and that whole body of work We’ve now seen nearly a million people impacted and developed a database of nearly 50 million data points to draw upon. And the learning about what makes us come alive has been profound. Along the way, with all of these experiences, all of this deep study, all this building and teaching answers, awakenings and simple yet practical and powerful models have emerged. Steps to be taken that have allowed me to, when I am present in the state of my own life, which isn’t always. Like I said, I am one of everybody else. I’m human. But when I allow myself to be present, it lets me reclaim so much more of a sense of agency and sanity.
Jonathan Fields: [00:18:20] Critical elements of an effective reactive life syndrome intervention and longer-term inoculation. That doesn’t mean I won’t. I won’t ever drop back into it, but it keeps me from dropping back into it much more frequently than I used to find myself, and all the conversations and experimentation and adventures and models and tools and strategies planted with 58 years on this planet, have coalesced into something approaching a methodology. I don’t know if you even like, but I put that word in quotes, by the way, because I’m still learning and growing. Hold it so lightly, but I always will be very much a student. Do I still sometimes have recurrences of reactive life syndrome? Sure. I find myself less than entirely aware and living reactively. Sure. Still very much human. Constantly testing my own limits. My Kryptonite is now different, though. My Kryptonite now is me. It’s not some other person or player’s agenda, but my own passion and unrelenting drive to make big, meaningful things happen, sometimes too many at once and at an unforgivable pace. It’s the aspiration beast within rather than the demand beast out there that sometimes drives me to that place. And underneath it, I’ve now also gained just a better, deeper understanding of what a thriving, aware, and intentional life looks and feels like, along with the ability to zoom the lens out to stop myself sooner when I’m headed off the rails and reclaim control.
Jonathan Fields: [00:19:58] So while I may still find myself in a storm of reactivity, it’s far more likely to be the result of choice from a place of seeing and knowing and accepting both the upside and the downside, and understanding why I’m doing it, how long I will remain in it, and what lies at the end. At a certain point, over time, I eventually felt called to start to share whatever it was that had been coming together in my head around this notion of reactive life syndrome and what we can do about it, knowing that it will continue to evolve and improve over time. So, as I always do when it’s time to bring everything together, I begin to write. And it took a few years to really get it all down. What emerged is what I guess I’d consider a simple idea, a way to live it, and a modern-day roadmap to not just recovery from reactive life syndrome, but outright flourishing and integrated. Learn it once and know it for life approach and a set of tools designed to support action, to cultivate awareness and to diagnose what’s working and not working. To hit reset and then immediately understand where to focus your energy to make the fastest, the most powerful journey home to who you really are, to the life that you are here to live with a sense of agency and not relinquish to the demands and agendas of others.
Jonathan Fields: [00:21:25] And we’ll be right back after a word from our sponsors. So what are some of the key elements of here? Well, step one is to wake up to the truth of our reality, to the level of frenetic, purposeless pace that has ended up guiding so much of each day. And for so many, this inciting incident never comes. This wake-up call, we just keep on keeping on, driven by a certain willful blindness, wondering why and when and how things will ever get better. When we will feel differently. Waiting in vain to breathe again, yet never doing anything to extract ourselves from the process. For others, this wake-up call, this awakening to the reality of what’s going on comes only in the darkest hour, when the weight of relentlessly living for everyone but you finally breaks us, and we’re forced to confront the gap between the life that we claim to hold dear and the one that we slipped into. So it’s my greatest hope that that this manifesto, this Unbusy manifesto, this conversation serves as a third option, a wake-up call that triggers a change in belief, a change in behavior, a change in intention, a change in direction long before futility takes the reigns and the years take their toll. Once the pattern has been interrupted, though, once we have this moment of awakening, well then what? So now it’s time to rebuild.
Jonathan Fields: [00:23:01] The question is how? How do you reassemble the pieces from a place of awareness and intention? How do you reconnect with what matters? How do you know where and when and what to focus your energies on and step back into a place of power and possibility? This is the very question that I have devoted so many of my own waking hours to for years now. Actually, if I’m being honest, if not my entire life, at least as an adult. And what I’ve discovered is actually deceptively simple yet powerful solution. So I’m going to share just a couple of steps here with you. So step one cultivate awareness. We cannot be intentional. We cannot choose and act in ways that reclaim agency and possibility until we become aware of where and when we are being reactive. As my dear friend, meditation teacher and founder of the Open Heart Project, Susan Piver has offered, unless you feel your own heart, you won’t know which gesture is kindness. Without awareness, there can be no intention. Without intention, we lose the ability to choose what matters and refuse what does not. So this Unbusy manifesto, it’s designed to be your awareness. Wake up call. An inciting incident that kind of shakes you from living by default into owning the possibility and responsibility to choose your behavior from this moment forward. To remove yourself from the weight of reactive life Syndrome.
Jonathan Fields: [00:24:37] But this manifesto alone is not enough. Decades of autopilot life. They often leave grooves in our brains. It takes effort to change the patterns, to lay down and deepen new, more intentional pathways. And this happens over time by cultivating a sustained awareness practice, one that gives us the ability to consistently kind of zoom the lens out throughout the day and notice when we are relenting rather than intending and then choosing what we want. So how do you cultivate sustained awareness then? Well, here are two ideas. Here are two what I would call big awareness levers for you. One cultivate a daily mindfulness practice. You have likely heard or read about this practice. It’s been all over the media over the last 510 years. There is a reason for this. Actually. Two the devastating symptoms of reactive life syndrome have led to pervasive and deep suffering. And it’s only getting worse as life gets busier and technology makes it harder to step away and be aware and intentional. And two, because it actually works. A simple daily mindfulness practice is doable, but pretty much anyone, yes. Even you. It’s simple, though not always easy, and over time, it literally rewires your brain to become more consistently present and mindful and aware of both your circumstances and the thoughts and stories, your internal weather that you’re telling yourself about those circumstances. And that lays the foundation for intention. Now there are tomes written about this practice, but if you’d like to learn how to begin quickly and easily, you can simply find instructions in so many different places.
Jonathan Fields: [00:26:32] Um, actually, I mentioned Susan Piver earlier. She leads the Open Heart Community or the Open Heart Project Community Online, which is one of the largest virtual meditation communities in the world and offers regular, guided mindfulness and other meditations to the community. There are so many different apps. There are so many different ways that you can access it, so many different videos you can find literally just type in search for guided mindfulness practice and then explore, play, experiment until you find something and a voice and a guide where it resonates and start in a guided way. And over time, you may find you don’t really need the guiding anymore. You just drop into it yourself. But it has become an incredibly accessible practice for nearly anyone. So you can do that. But I’ll give you a second kind of fun way to start to bring more moments of mindfulness into your day, and that is to create what I call awareness triggers. So here’s where we leverage technology to deliver intermittent awareness prompts. This is fun and even a bit counterintuitive, and you might even say subversive. We have seen so much about how technology is making us less mindful. Well, by getting a bit creative, we can actually harness it to train our brains to become more mindful and aware, instead of having it distract us and take hours from our day scrolling feeds relentlessly and then realizing, wait a minute, I had ten times too much to do, and now I’ve just spent two hours on this feed, and now I have still ten times more to do, but two hours less time to do it.
Jonathan Fields: [00:28:07] And I didn’t even have enough time before that. Instead of doing that, we can turn technology on its head and use it in a super simple and fun way to actually make us more mindful. So how? Okay, here’s what I want you to do. You may already have this in your pocket. Many of you will be consuming this on a mobile device, a phone. So grab your smart or mobile device. If you happen to use a wearable tracking device or any other mobile device that in some way, shape or form is programmable that can do in pretty much all are now and find the timer or the alarm function on it. Usually it’s an app that’s somewhere like the timer, right? Or the alarm functionality. Now here’s what I want you to do. Set it to vibrate at certain times throughout the day. If you want, you can literally start and say okay, so every hour on the hour from 8 a.m. until 6 p.m., I’m going to program a little vibration alert. Now, it doesn’t have to be a bell or a noise.
Jonathan Fields: [00:29:08] In fact, it probably shouldn’t be, because then you’ll be bugging everyone around you who hears all the alarm. But if you have some sort of vibration that’s different than what would be associated with your normal ring vibration or tone. So when it’s in your pocket or on your desk or wherever it may be, you can tell, oh, there’s like three little blips, you know, that means this is a special mindfulness awareness trigger. You can either do it once an hour, random times. Just be sure you set at least six or even up to 12 alerts a day. I know your sound, it sounds like a lot, but literally you can do it once and then just have it repeat. And of course only during waking hours. You don’t want to do this so that it wakes you up in the middle of the night to try and be mindful at 3 a.m. when you’re trying to sleep. It may take a few minutes to set, but this is going to help you really just change the way that you drop into mindfulness. Now. Every time you feel that vibe alert, here’s what you do. Take a moment to focus your awareness on that moment. Get present. Notice where you are and what you’re doing. Really drink it all in the motion. The scene, the scent, the sound, the feel, everything outside of you. And now go inside.
Jonathan Fields: [00:30:23] What are you feeling? What are you. What are you thinking? What are your emotions? This will begin to train your brain to keep going back to this place of mindful awareness over time, without the need of the vibe alert. You keep doing this every day. You just get these automatic prompts. Oh, I’m online at the bank. I have the vibe alert. Oh, I’m out with friends at lunch. Oh, I’m doing work. I’m in a meeting and you’re zoning out. You’re an autopilot mode. You’re reactive. This basically brings you present in the moment, takes five to 10s just to get present, to sense and notice. And over time, this has a training effect on your brain. It’s kind of like, you know, a classic Pavlovian conditioning where a bell was associated with food. And then over time, just the sound of the bell actually led dogs to salivate. Their physiology changed because it becomes associated with it. And eventually you can just turn off the alerts and know that you will be consistently more aware throughout the day. Now the question is, what do you do with your newfound awareness? Okay, so now we’ve maybe started to say yes to cultivating a mindfulness practice, and we’re having fun playing with these mindful awareness triggers in our device. And we’re starting to drop into moments a lot more. And we’re also starting to realize that we are reacting a whole lot and not being intentional.
Jonathan Fields: [00:31:45] Right? And that’s where step two comes in. Step two is to cultivate intention once we are aware. Now the invitation is how do we cultivate intentionality? So if you ever ended up in a conversation that turns into an argument and somewhere in the middle, an awareness light bulb flickers on and you realize, oh wow, I’m being a complete idiot and just arguing for the sake of arguing. Or the opposite. Maybe you’re like, so heads down, working really hard on something and you’re thinking to yourself, wait a minute. Something snaps in you. You kind of look up and around. You have this awareness trigger that clicks in your pocket, the vibe alert, and then you think to yourself, I’ve been so heads down working. I didn’t even realize there was so much beauty all around me in this moment. That’s where your awareness practice allows you to do these things, to snap out of the trance of mindfulness and choose your behavior rather than default into it numbly in that moment, and then the next moment, and then the next. So that moment where you realize that you get to choose. That’s where intention steps in, where you get to decide to go left or right, to hold or fold, to love or leave, to say yes or no, or just exhale and allow your life to unfold in an organic way. Less about force and more about allowing.
Jonathan Fields: [00:33:06] This is what it means to be intentional, to own the responsibility for the state of your life and meet any opportunity to allocate your time and your energy and attention with a deliberate choice, rather than a complete relinquishing of any sense of intentionality or will. So when it comes to trying to eliminate or, quote, treat reactive life syndrome and its pernicious symptoms from and move them away from your life. A simple rule applies. You choose or you lose. So being intentional is all about choosing choice as your default and only the outcomes, good or bad, even if that choice is surrender. It’s about taking a kind of an artisanal approach to life, weaving it into a tapestry that tells a story that makes you say, this is my good life. I’m consciously participating in its unfolding, rather than reacting to everyone else’s desire to make it unfold in a particular way and allowing it to take the shape of everyone else’s agendas but my own. And by the way, you may not have an agenda once you realize it’s you. So awareness and intention. They lay a powerful good life foundation. These are sort of like the two touchstones. Once you start to become more aware, and once you start to become more intentional without anything else, everything starts to shift. And really powerful, subtle but powerful ways. You start to get less reactive and more present. But there’s still one big potential missing piece of this puzzle.
Jonathan Fields: [00:34:48] The final ingredient of kind of a treatment for reactive life syndrome. And we’ll be right back after a word from our sponsors. So now let’s get really granular with six specific daily actions and practices that build on your awareness intentionality. So number one, set boundaries with clarity and compassion. Now, one of the main reasons we fall into reactive life syndrome is a lack of clear boundaries. Without them, everything and everyone else’s needs really, they just take precedence over our own. So here’s a way to begin shifting that dynamic. Start by identifying, just say, one area of your life where you feel a bit overwhelmed or out of control. And maybe it’s work, maybe it’s a specific relationship or even managing personal commitments. Set a small, clear boundary just around that one area, such as maybe not checking work emails after a certain time, or saying no to a single obligation this week, even if that little voice inside of you says no, I want to say yes. But the other voice knows that it’s just going to pile on. And here’s the key. Communicate this boundary with both clarity and compassion. So instead of framing it as a rejection of someone else, see if you can position it as a step toward honoring your own well-being. You’ll be surprised at how much more respect and space you can create just by being firm yet kind.
Jonathan Fields: [00:36:31] So practice number two. Practice single-tasking. I know we have heard this so many times before, but are you actually doing it in the culture that continues to glorify multitasking? We often feel like we need to juggle ten things at once just to keep up. But this constant state of task switching it leads to more stress and less focus. The antidote is single-tasking. So here’s how to do it. Choose one task. Set a timer for, say, anywhere from 15 to 25 minutes. Kind of like the Pomodoro Technique, if you’re familiar with that, and then commit to focusing on that task for the full time. No emails, no notifications, no distractions. When the timer goes off, take a short break. A little bit of a brain wash out period can be just a couple of minutes if you want, and then decide whether to continue with the task. Maybe there’s more and you’re in a good groove, and another 25 minutes would really make you feel like you knocked this thing out, or move on to the next one. Single-tasking. It not only enhances your productivity, but also it helps you reclaim your sense of control over your time and attention. It helps you harness that awareness and intentionality to actually focus in on the things that truly matter. And that brings us to practice number three. And this is just kind of like a fun way to use your breathing to create intentional space before responding.
Jonathan Fields: [00:38:08] We call it the three-breath reset. So feeling overwhelmed or stuck in a reactive loop is really common. If you’re feeling that you are not alone, especially when life starts to feel a bit chaotic, which for a lot of people these days is a lot of the time. So when you notice yourself getting pulled into autopilot, getting busy for the sake of busyness, we can use the three-breath reset to shift your mindset. So. So here’s how it works. First, take that first breath. Focus on the physical sensation of breathing in and out. Now maybe it’s the sensation at the tip of your nose. If you’re breathing through your nose, a little bit of coolness as it comes in, a little bit of warmness as it goes out. Maybe it’s the movement of your chest or your belly or whatever it may be, but take that first breath to focus on the physical sensation. Now. Second breath. Feel yourself just grounding into the present moment. Am I here just with the breath? And that brings us to the third breath. Set a brief intention for how you want to proceed as you take that third breath, whether it’s to stay calm, to be productive, or engage more intentionally with what’s in front of you. This practice is it’s quick. It seems almost inconsequential. How could these three breaths really make a difference? But amazingly, they can.
Jonathan Fields: [00:39:37] The first one is a bit of a micro mindfulness practice. It gets you back into your breath. The second one deepens that with getting you into the present moment, and the third one really builds on that to allow you to be more responsive than reactive, more intentional. And this it’s a quick but powerful practice, providing a micro-moment of mindfulness that just helps you pause and reset and choose how you want to move forward with awareness instead of reactive busyness. So that brings us to practice number four. And this is a fun one that I heard years ago. I actually find it incredibly effective. Use a not-to-do list. So we’re all familiar with to-do lists I have them. But how often do we focus on what not to do and not to do? List is about identifying habits or commitments or distractions that simply don’t serve you, so you can start letting them go. Take a moment to reflect on activities that drain your energy, or maybe lead to more reactivity. Maybe it’s doomscrolling social media saying yes to every request, or attending meetings that really don’t need you to be there. And trust me, we have all been there. I am probably guilty of holding those meetings. Now write these down and consciously avoid them for the next seven days. And if seven days just feels like it’s incomprehensible to you, ask yourself what is? Is it one day? Is it two days? Is it three days? Just commit to it for that amount of time.
Jonathan Fields: [00:41:16] This simple shift, it can create immediate space for more intentional actions to then fill in or not, or just allow that space to be for you to breathe and recover and reclaim a sense of ease and peace and normalcy. And that brings us to practice number five. And this is this really interesting invitation to embrace strategic pause days. So we tend to live in a cycle of just go, go, go without ever allowing ourselves to fully reset, incorporating strategic pause days into your life where you step back from the daily grind to reflect, to recharge, to realign, to do nothing, to just surrender to what is. That can really help prevent burnout and reactivity. It dials back the busyness or the impact of the busyness. Now paused. It doesn’t have to be a vacation. It can be a half day, or even a few hours where you put everything on hold. And during that time, ask yourself what’s working, what’s not? Where am I saying yes when I want to say no? And then use this time to reset your priorities and get back in touch with your deeper values. And that brings us to practice number six. This is prioritizing meaningful micro-moments. So we often think that big things are the way that we make change happen right.
Jonathan Fields: [00:43:00] When we talk about reclaiming our lives. But transformation or liberation can also happen, and generally does happen more often and more effectively in tiny daily moments. So consider integrating micro-moments of meaning into your day and routine. Now, this could be something as simple as sharing a deep breath with your child before bedtime, spending five minutes journaling your thoughts, or savoring a quiet moment of stillness in the morning with your coffee. These tiny moments, they add up and serve as a kind of gentle reminders that you have the power to infuse intention and meaning and choose the pace of your day, even amidst life’s busyness. So remember the path to getting unbusy and reclaiming your life. It doesn’t have to be overwhelming. In fact, it shouldn’t be overwhelming. You already have enough of that in your life. It’s not about changing everything overnight. It’s about taking small, meaningful steps like setting boundaries, practicing single-tasking, embracing micro moments. These strategies can really help you disrupt the patterns of reactivity and create more intention and agency and space. Even if you then choose that space simply to surrender to what is, to enjoy, to just accept and embrace and smile into it. But we need the awareness and the intentionality and the space to make that happen. And remember, if this episode resonates with you, go ahead and share it with friends and family who might also benefit from these ideas.
Jonathan Fields: [00:44:48] Together, we can all move from being just maniacally busy and overwhelmed and perpetually reactive and falling behind to feeling present, engaged, Intentional living. One step, one moment, one breath at a time. It’s time to say yes to getting unbusy, to being more present and feeling more connected and alive. Until next time, I’m Jonathan Fields and this is Good Life Project. This episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers, Lindsey Fox and me, Jonathan Fields. Kristoffer Carter crafted our theme music and of course, if you haven’t already done so, please go ahead and follow Good Life Project in your favorite listening app. And if you found this conversation interesting or inspiring or valuable, and chances are you did. Since you’re still listening here, would you do me a personal favor? A seven-second favor and share it? Maybe on social or by text or by email? Even just with one person? Just copy the link from the app you’re using and tell those you know, those you love, those you want to help navigate this thing called life a little better so we can all do it better together with more ease and more joy. Tell them to listen, then even invite them to talk about what you’ve both discovered. Because when podcasts become conversations and conversations become action, that’s how we all come alive together. Until next time, I’m Jonathan Fields signing off for Good Life Project.