Good Life Project - Unbusy: A Manifesto

Episode Date: October 13, 2016

Busyness. It’s a problem. But, what if there was something deeper happening? An epic battle between intention and surrender that is both a source of profound pain, and an unlock key for life unbounded? And, along with that, an undiagnosed condition—Reactive Life Syndrome—that so many of us are living with, without even knowing it, or […]The post Unbusy: A Manifesto appeared first on Good LifeProject. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hey, it's Jonathan, and I am here with a very special Good Life Project riff today. It's not your ordinary riff, and here's why. On the same day that I am releasing this podcast episode, this generally short and sweet riff, I'm also releasing a manifesto I've been working on for quite some time. The name of the manifesto is Unbusy a Manifesto. I know, very creative. As you may guess, it dives into the topic of busyness, but I have a bit of a different take on this than you may have heard before. In fact, I think there's something deeper going on that people aren't talking about. It's less about busyness. And it's more about what

I call reactivity. And I think you're going to want to hear it. And you may want to go deeper into it. Now, here's the deal. I am going to do a spoken word read of the first half or so of it, but it starts to get kind of long. And because this is a riff, I didn't want to make this an unforgivably long piece. So I'm going to get you guys going. And if you find that you're totally digging it and it's resonating powerfully, and you would like to jam through the rest of it, then you can find the rest of it. You can download it. It's actually a beautifully designed, polished, finished PDF document that you can download and read anywhere you want. And you can find a link to

that right below in the show notes. You can also find it posted on my personal website. Just go check out jonathanfields.com slash unbusy. On to this week's live read, Unbusy, a manifesto. 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, seeding the quest to craft an existence with intention, to breathlessly trying not to crumble, while we do all we can to not fall too far behind, getting ahead in our dream. Truth is, for most of us, there wasn't a single moment. That's what makes it so insidious. Maybe if there was a big decision, a single happening where we were presented with a choice to live reactively or intentionally. We have seen it coming and actually known it was time to choose rather than what almost always happens. We relent and react. We give up control and microdoses,

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, if we wake up, only to discover we are suffering deeply. Breathlessly busy without a pause, without a cause, not acting with intention, but reacting from the moment we open our eyes to the moment we lay our heads fitfully down on the pillow. Increasingly, we find ourselves wrecked, living with an undiagnosed condition. Reactive Life Syndrome, RLS for short. Everything would be better, we think, if we could just get a moment,

an hour, a day, a week to breathe, to choose. Yet the pace we've surrendered to holds us hostage, and we just don't see a way out. We may even tell ourselves, hey, it's not so bad, but is that truth speaking or futility? Even if it's not hit a breaking point yet, we've got to ask ourselves, am I okay with where this is heading? Because with every waking moment, we are creating a trajectory with our lives. There is no sideways. What we feel as nagging now will eventually become gnawing and left to fester, will take us down and then out. It's just a matter of time. Left untreated, the seas of the condition always mushroom into full-blown RLS. We end up being dragged through life rather than living it. Truth is, it's not our fault, at least up until now.

How could we have known there was a cure when we didn't know there was a disease, one that had been controlling our nearly every move for years, maybe even decades? It's just the culture we've been brought up in, an ethos that says, this is reality. At a certain point, you just give up. 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, we're told, deal with it. It's not something to be fixed. It's just the way things are. pace without a purpose, taking on more than the next person without regard to whether it really matters is how we're taught to get ahead. Except it's a lie. Reactive life syndrome is not a badge of honor. It's a symptom of surrender. If you've read this far, it's also a pretty safe bet. You've got it on some level. And it's time for a wake-up call. If we continue to relent rather than reclaim that choice and everything that flows from it, the continued blunting of everything that truly matters from this moment forward is entirely on us. The responsibility to step into a place of awareness and tension, to flip the switch from being controlled to being in control, to free ourselves from the weight of RLS, is now ours.

The pivot to possibility. What if, for the first time in a long time, we opened to the possibility of a different reality? One where we reclaimed and crafted each day, rather than reacted and surrendered them to the never-ending demands of others? What if we bridged the gap from reactive and repressed to intentional and alive? What if we chose what mattered? We set the pace. We decided who to work with, to play with, to create with, to partner with, to give to, to be in service of. What if we crafted and celebrated each moment? Not from a place of constantly catching up frenzy, but of grounded intention, of lightness, of joy. What if we could 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. What if today was the day we rose up and proclaimed to ourselves and the world, oh hell no, I will not surrender the rest 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-dos that that matter to everyone but me. The creed. There's got to be another way. There is another way. And it starts on the deepest level. Belief deep. Because until we shift our beliefs to support a different reality, we'll never do what's necessary to get there. Here's what I've come to believe. Growing up doesn't mean giving up. Before you can rise up, you need to wake up. You are not a reaction to other people's needs. Life begins

when you are unapologetically you. Being of service doesn't mean being a doormat. Self-care is the beating heart of other care. This moment seeds every moment. Intention overrides reaction. Vulnerability is a virtue. Meaning matters, and so do people. These values, these beliefs, they till the soil of a life well-lived. They anchor the path to a cure, a way back from being busy without a cause, pummeled by pace and ravaged by reactivity. But in order to manifest it, to inoculate ourselves against reinfection, we need to play a part in our own

recovery. It's not enough to believe. It's not enough to know. We've got to act, to take the first step in our journey back to an intentional, connected, vital, meaningful, lit up life. So that's the first few pages of Unbusy, a Manifesto. And I would actually live read the entire thing for you, but it's going to be kind of long if I do that. And it's the type of thing that I think you're going to want to just spend some time with as well. This manifesto is released today. Again, you can read the entire thing. You can slow down. You can mark it up. You can share it with friends and you can

find it in the show notes. So check out the link in the show notes, or you can also find it at my personal website, jonathanfields.com slash unbusy. And what you'll find in the rest of it is a deeper conversation that takes you by the hand and shows you what to actually do to start to pull yourself out of the grips of reactive life syndrome, to inoculate yourself from reinfection, and to start to reclaim that lit up intentional state of being. I hope you've enjoyed it. I hope you are inspired to go deeper into this conversation. I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project.