It’s Summertime! My favorite.
Summer represents a time to slow down and savor the beauty of nature.
I love to take long walks, sit on the patio reading a good book, or hang out there with friends and family.
I soak up the sun, swim in cool water, and spend as much time as possible outside.
It’s a time to slow down, yet it goes by so quickly, just like our lives.
Busyness will take over if we aren’t intentional.
Many of my clients often feel stressed, overwhelmed, and short on time.
Because of that, I frequently recommend a fascinating book called Do Nothing: How to Break Away from Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving.
Celeste Headlee makes a well-researched case for working smarter, not harder.
She explores the history of our obsession with productivity and how it leads to a toxic culture of hustle, which is contributing to our increasing cases of depression and anxiety.
As a society, we are more affluent, more efficient, and more unhappy than ever.
And so, we continue the cycle by doing more, hoping that something will make us feel better.
I love this book because it challenges thoughts and beliefs that have unconsciously been passed down from generation to generation.
We do that.
As children, we accept the beliefs of our parents because we don’t yet have critical thinking skills.
They also accepted the beliefs of their parents, and so on.
Those thoughts become our belief systems, and those beliefs create our lives.
So what do we do?
We create awareness.
The most powerful question we can ask is why?
The most productive emotion we can have is curiosity.
They both lead to intentional actions that create desired results.
Is your current belief system producing the results you want in your life?
If not, question them.
They might be outdated.
They might have served you or the originator of the thought at one time, but because of life's evolutionary nature, they just don’t work anymore.
They might have even been created by someone with different values than you.
Find out. Be curious. Question.
It’s your one and only life, and you have to decide how to live it.
You don’t have to blindly allow others to decide how you will live it.
Be intentional, purposeful, and deliberate.
Future you will thank you.
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