myself included.
The solutions were at my fingertips, but I had been so busy in my relationship with busy that I didn’t even realize I had become the proverbial cobbler without any shoes. I had spent more than twenty years sharing my techniques for living a healthy lifestyle, and yet I was ignoring a big piece of that prescription: mindfulness.
Mindfulness is more than just having a good attitude, and I sensed there was a way I could connect it with the positive impacts that fitness and healthful food offered. Everyone knows how important both are, but for some reason, until recently mindfulness has not been as fully accepted as a tool for transforming one’s life.
As I turned my attention to making that connection, I recalled an experience I had had with my mother some twenty years earlier. It was Mother’s Day weekend, and she had invited me to go to a Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) seminar. It was a small group of about fifty, all looking for ways to improve the quality of their daily lives or to help their clients do the same. The presenter was dynamic, charming, and a powerfully poignant speaker. When he asked for a volunteer from the audience, I raised my hand. Why, I don’t know; that wasn’t something I liked to do — to be exposed in front of a bunch of people I didn’t know. Nonetheless, I went up on the stage and took my place on the stool provided.
The technique he said he would guide me through was a method of releasing emotional disturbances from my subconscious. Great. Just what I wanted: to cry in front of a roomful of strangers.
As he directed me through a series of questions, I answered each, surprised at my candor. However, about midway through, I felt my entire body tense up with emotion. My palms got sweaty, my forehead tightened, my cheeks turned hot and red, and I could feel my eyes begin to sting. Just as my tear faucet was about to open, he abruptly said, “Repeat your phone number backward!” What? Was this guy crazy? I’m thinking, I was just getting ready to have a good cry over those crummy memories you helped me stir up, and now you want me to do what?
As I struggled to see the numbers in my head backward and repeat them out loud, I felt my body begin to calm down. My cheeks were no longer steaming, and all signs of tears were gone. The exercise of repeating my phone number backward initiated a conscious pause from the emotions attached to my story.
It’s like driving along the same road every day without thinking about the next turn. It’s all so familiar and predictable. And then one day, out of nowhere, a child dashes in front of your car. You slam on your brakes, and instantly you’re aware of your surroundings. Whatever you may have been thinking is gone, and all your attention is on the unexpected event — the present moment. Repeating my phone number worked in the same way. It’s a quick yet simple method to shift from unresourceful automatic thinking to the reality of the present moment.
That day I realized I often functioned from a subconscious level of reactions that I had long ago built, that my past experiences — my training — developed my habits and led my emotions. And although the technique that day was just a small and partial sample of NLP, it altered my awareness. I was instantaneously struck by the powerful possibilities this training could offer and all the techniques that help uncover limiting behaviors and unresourceful habits. Still, I wasn’t quite ready to be honest with myself, and it would take another twenty years, and that panic attack, to get me there.
In 2012, after that panic attack, I pursued and acquired my NLP Master Practitioner credentials. And thanks to Tim and Kris Hallbom of the NLP Institute of California, my training set me on an accelerated path for making swift and lasting lifestyle changes.
I set out to chronicle the habits leading to the frustrations of a time-strapped lifestyle. What I found is that it’s not just habits creating busy behavior; there is also an underlying ethos whispering, Women said they could do it all, so they got it all — all meaning family and career, and we have been doing both for the past four decades at a pace that has put us squarely on the main street of Busy Town. The price we’ve paid to run this race includes career delays and interruptions, limited extended family support, more financial responsibilities, and even more societal expectations that we should do it all, and well. And if we don’t get it all done without losing our cool or hiding out in the backseats of our cars to steal a few minutes of alone time, we sense that we have failed.
My panic attack was a symptom of my hectic lifestyle. My day began at 4:45 AM, after I had napped intermittently through the night, racking up about five hours of sleep. My work day typically lasted twelve hours and often continued late at night after my young daughter went to bed. And although I loved what I was doing, I was doing too much. My lifestyle included regular fitness and healthy eating; however, my habit of overscheduling began to outweigh the benefits of both. It was that not-so-gentle push that I needed to make some habit-changing choices. I had to find solutions, and I did. Those solutions and practices are what you will find in this book.
I’m happy to say I haven’t had a panic attack since I uncovered my brand of busy and worked through each of the solutions outlined in this book. I have developed each technique using my experience and those of the women I have had the pleasure to work with for more than twenty years. I have been greatly inspired by the work of Deepak Chopra, Jack Kornfield, Rick Hanson, and Sondra Kornblatt. Their brilliant books have had a great impact on the fields of mindfulness, science, and lifestyle.
This book is a culmination of my work using my Fitness-Food-Attitude approach and my Five-Step Super Solutions Process. These, along with NLP-inspired techniques, form the foundation of the solutions for breaking up with busy. Your aspirations, goals, and personal time don’t deserve to be relegated to the optional column of your day. No, you deserve better, and as a fellow Overscheduled Woman, I wrote this book to give you a way out of your busy traps and a path back to living the life you desire.
If you’re one of the 55 million women struggling to reclaim your days, without the flurry of hustle and rush, your first step out of the busy race is to stop and take a break. This book gives you an effective — and fun — process for bringing back your brand of well-deserved enjoyment and calm. You’ll decrease the hurried frenzy of getting it all done and learn to lighten up on yourself and to reassess your expectations. You’ll learn the signs that lead to your busy pace, what type of OSW you are, how to reset your mind-set, and the busy-busting solutions that are best suited for your breakup with busy. You’ll support your transformation using my Five-Step Super Solutions Process and perhaps make it your go-to tool for dropping your busy habits. Each solution can be quickly mastered so that no matter what situation you are faced with, you can tap into your personal power and transform your time — immediately! And to keep you on your busy-free path, the playbook is filled with fifty-two refreshers and reminders that will carry you through each week. This book will be your magic wand, your golden ticket, and your secret sauce.
Women today have reset the bar, and it’s high. We expect our performance to be flawless and our energy endless, undertaking multiple roles that will set us apart from the ordinary. We collectively aim to be the most creative and dynamic professionals, the parents with all the answers, the most understanding and loving partners, and the best and most reliable friends. Our perfectionistic expectations have led to this unrealistic and terribly demanding mind-set, and we multitask from one event to another, silently murmuring under our exhausted coffee-soaked breath, Something’s got to give, and I’m tired of it always being me! It’s time to change that paradigm and begin moving in a new direction, one step at a time.
I ask you, just for a moment, to suspend all judgment, all assumptions, and to think of your one-step-at-a-time as a waterfall streaming from the center of a beautiful mountain. A cascading waterfall doesn’t start by being a waterfall; it begins with a single droplet of rain. Its magnificence and power lie within its connectedness, not its separateness. Your connection with self is similar to the waterfall; you are a magnificent creation of your mind and body, your spirit and soul. It’s time to reconnect each and be
