If you want to know if you are addicted to doing, here’s the test: Take 30 minutes and do nothing. Watch how your body reacts. Notice where your thoughts go and notice what feelings get stirred up.
As you do nothing: your mind races, your body feels uncomfortable and your emotions are like a rollercoaster. Just like the addicts I use to work with in my previous job.
Actually these reactions are not generated by a true addictive withdrawal but more by the ego-mind feeling it’s loosing control. Your body will want to get up and move. Your thoughts come up with rationalizations as to why you need to do anything but sit still right now.
The ego-mind uses doing as a self-definition. Without doing this mind gets agitated. It uses what you do as a way to say who you are. One of the first questions people ask when they are getting to know you is, “What do you do?”
Doing is what we do. There is nothing wrong with doing. It is how all the stuff of the world gets done. We set goals, make plans, move into action so we can keep doing.
Doing can be very satisfying when you see your results. However those good feelings go away fast and you’re left with the need to do more to keep feeling okay.
So what is the problem with all this doing? It’s what you’re not doing. In other words when you are busy doing, you miss out on what can happen when you are not doing.
The other side of doing is being. Being offers a whole range of possibilities that are missed in doing.
Here are a number of the highlights of being:
To be at peace with yourself
To fully listen to your intuition, the voice of your soul, your higher nature
To sit in stillness
To be fully present to another
To see the beauty around you
To feel your heart
To live in the presence of the moment
To experience the true joy of living
To open to creative expression
To be awareness
To tap into the collective consciousness
To enjoy what is
To love fully
To be mindful of your own inner dialogue
To feel totally free in the now
To expand beyond ordinary thoughts
There are many other advantages of being that can be added to this list. I am sure you appreciate the benefits of being more now than you did before your read this.
Although the above list may be impressive, the practical values of being may go by unnoticed. If you are able to be with yourself, you will do life with more confidence. Your ability to be comfortable with self translates into comfort with others.
The challenge of forming relationships that matter depend on your ability to be with others. The depth of your relationships will be directly proportionate to how present you are to those you spend time with.
If you listen with compassion and are fully engaged in your interactions, relationships can grow. Meaningful relationships are more about being than doing.
Isn’t life about the quality of relationships we have? Being expands these possibilities greatly.
How do you bring more being into your life? The answer to this is very simple but sometimes easier said than done.
Being means slowing down enough to be present to life, to others and to you. The best method I have found is to sit and become aware of your breath (which is always there, if not you’re done doing.) Watching the breath flow in and out of your body brings you into the here and now where being and awareness make everything come more fully alive.
“To be or not to be?” Thank you Mr. Shakespeare for such and essential question. What will it be for you?