“How are you?”
“I’m so busy!”
“Life is crazy!”
“I’m slammed…”
How many of us answer this simple question this way? I have….many times. It’s a natural response. Certainly true.
But if you stop to think. How. Depressing.
Do we really want to be known for our busyness? Do we want to be defined by the chaos of our lives? Wouldn’t it be better to respond with…virtually anything?
I was reading about this concept the other day. That how you answer this simple question actually can be a mirror to your soul. And, how your answer actually reinforces the out of control/too busy feeling. What if you respond to the simple “how are you” question in this manner multiple times a day? This means, multiple times a day, you are reinforcing that you feel busy. Stressed. Over-done.
The author experimented with answering the “how are you?” question with variations of “I’m great!” He found that his mood lifted. He felt proud of the mirror to his soul. And, even if we ARE busy, don’t we all want to be great?
I had the opportunity to see an incredible presentation yesterday by Dr. Michael Gervais. He is the high performance psychologist for many high performance athletes, including the Seattle Seahawks. I learned so much from him – get ready for lots of blogs quoting Dr. Gervais.
One of the concepts he talked about was the pervasive worry that impacts many of us, particularly those who seek high achievement. And high achievement can come in many forms – high achieving athletes. High achieving parents. High achieving professionals. He described that many of us believe that we “need to do more to be more.” Instead, we need to BE more to do more. He further described this as being more authentic. Being more human. Being more present. Being more focused.
I loved this concept. It’s so easy to think we should do more – in every avenue of life. But really, the ultimate achievement is being our best self. Being more. Us. Even if we happen to be a little bit busy too.
The quote above is one of my favorites.
“It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: what are we busy about?” Henry David Thoreau
So moving forward, if you ask me “how are you?” you’ll likely hear, “I’m fantastic. How are you?”
The Redefining 
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