Ode to the Busy

I see you

Making life easier for everyone else.

The way you are patient with the clerk

Pick up yet another errant sock

Get another mostly homemade meal on the table

Plus extra in a tupperware for the ailing neighbor.

“Busy” is a word you left behind long ago

Because it implies that there is a world – or a day –

In which you are not busy.

In every moment you are working, planning –

Juggling –

Giving your warm-hearted attention to this issue and the next

To this needy person and the next.

And it seems like being strong and capable is

Its own punishment

Every moment a sharp-toothed hydra, growing two heads for

Each one you think you’ve handled.

Everyone turns to you.

Every problem is yours to solve.

And you still feel as though maybe you are not

Doing enough.

The painful fear of failing is

Worse than the fatigue

So you keep going.

Luckily, you have an excellent sense of humor

And a love of long walks

And three close friends on speed dial.

And you are excellent at counting your blessings.

Blessed are those in back-to-back meetings, for theirs is the patience of mountains.

Blessed are those who are annoyed by willful ignorance, for theirs is a righteous fury.

Blessed are the uncomplaining, for theirs is a peaceful surrender to the inanities of the world.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for carbs and wine, for they shall be comforted.

Blessed are those who dance in the kitchen

Make time for family game night

Say, “I love you” at every single opportunity

Ignoring the eye rolls of the young ones

As you go out of your way to make an

Ordinary moment

A memory.

Because it is the memories that matter.

A legacy of moonlight on mown grass

And a quick hug.

You are indeed as busy as a bee – the Queen Bee –

Sensitive to the hum of the whole hive

Filled with sweetness and good medicine

The center of the whole eco-system, really.

The center of the benevolent hum.

Waking Up Wanting: How Doing Little Things Is the Antidote to Burnout

If you’re like me, you wake up pretty much every morning thinking about what you want.

And then you spend the rest of the day talking yourself out of it.

Or psyching yourself out of it.

Or ignoring it because you spend every waking minute doing the things that everyone else needs you to do.

Sometimes you wake up thinking of what you want in a dreaming way….with a gentle feeling of longing.

Oh, wouldn’t it be wonderful to have my own business and not have to launch out of bed right now and start hustling for someone else…

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be able to take a trip – to go somewhere special….

Gee, wouldn’t it be great to be able to spend time on this hobby or activity that I love…

Other times, your desire shows up as vicious self-criticism.

Ugh. I can’t believe I haven’t done XYZ yet…

I’m such a failure – I haven’t lost this weight or even started exercising….

I feel like a loser because I haven’t written that book yet…

This early morning self-punishing is a hard way to greet the day, don’t you think?

Other times you just wake up feeling sort of dead and empty.

I don’t even know what would make a difference for me….I’m just so tired of my life….

I’m so sick of going to the same office and saying the same things to the same people over and over again…

Between the needs of my family and the needs of my job, I’m too tired to even know what I want…

And when you repeat this pattern day after day, you wind up with that horrible hamster-wheel feeling.

Because burnout doesn’t come from working hard – it comes from working hard and feeling like it doesn’t make any difference.

So the antidote to burn-out is MEANING.

And a great clue to finding meaning in your life is to look to those things you wake up wanting.

If you look underneath your feeling of dissatisfaction, you may find some interesting questions:

Where is the joy in my life?

Where is the zhuzh? The energy and sparkle?

Where is my power to change things?

These are excellent questions. You may even want to use them as journaling prompts, hm?

Let us take a moment right now to agree that this strategy of “wanting something, then not giving it to yourself all day” is not creating the life that you want.

So let’s think of a new strategy.

We’re going to do this right now.

And here’s our new, easy strategy.

Ready?

1) Pick One Thing You Want to Change

There might be several areas in your life that you want to see changed or a number of things you want to do. Since the purpose of this exercise is to explore this new strategy, I want you to just Pick One.

Pick whichever one bubbles up first for you – big or small.

OK – have you chosen an area of your life you’d like to change?

Great.

Now write that down so you don’t start second-guessing yourself before we’ve even begun.

2) Think of One. Simple. Tiny. Easy. Step.

Write down one simple, easy thing you can do today that will help you make the change you wrote down.

Simple = this step isn’t complicated; you probably already know how to do this.

Tiny = this step will take less than 15 minutes and is easily affordable or free.

Easy = you might even enjoy doing this step.

And I don’t care how dumb it seems. Or how much you feel like it’s not going to help. Because we’re just experimenting, right?

See, it’s your ego that wants to make big moves. Your ego wants to make it an all-or-nothing scenario. Your ego wants to make these big sweeping decisions.

I’m here to tell you your life will change thanks to tiny incremental actions.

Maybe your Simple Tiny Easy Action is to spend 15 minutes cruising some job websites – just to see what else is out there. (Can you see how this moves the inner conversation from, “Ugh I should really quit this job but I can’t afford it blah blah blah,” to “I’m going to just do a little check on what else might be out there for me.” Much more manageable, yes?

Or maybe your Simple Tiny Easy Action is to spend 15 minutes dancing in your kitchen, just to feel the pure joy of moving to music.

Maybe you want to spend 15 minutes writing just 200 words of a book.

Maybe you want to spend 15 minutes reaching out to a friend.

Maybe you spend 15 minutes staring at a blank piece of paper. That’s OK. A little time facing white space never hurt a person.

And here’s the wonderful news: if you do your Simple Tiny Easy Action – your whole day will be different.

It’s possible that the whole trajectory of your life will change.

But – for sure – your day will change.

3) Repeat This Process Tomorrow

And the day after that. And the day after that. And the day after that. And the day after that.

This is how we change our lives.

This is why I wrote the book, “Start Right Where You Are: How Little Changes Can Make a Big Difference for Overwhelmed Procrastinators, Frustrated Overachievers and Recovering Perfectionists” (New World Library).

When people looked at my life and asked me, “Wow, how did you go from being a broke actor in Los Angeles who never had two nickels to rub together to being this prosperous business owner, thought leader, and author?” (hair toss, hair toss)

It wasn’t just one thing. It was a lot of simple, tiny, easy decisions. It was a lot of simple, tiny, easy actions in a lot of areas of my life.

And it’s not just me – I’ve helped tens of thousands of clients change their lives with this process, most recently with our breakthrough 90-day program, The Get It Done Lab.

Sam’s Get it Done Lab has helped me to blow past some serious creative blocks and fall in love with the process. The process is now lifting me rather than crushing me. – Beth Jaffe

I am super excited and happy about the shift that is already occurring in me with the little I have done already and… just the basic shift in attitude…really the most important question regardless…what do I *really* want? That’s what matters. – Jodi Johnson

You can do the same. Starting right now.

Here’s the thing: Every day is precious to us. We do not know when our last day here is.

Do not wait to move forward on having the life that matters to you.

A Prayer For Our Family

A PRAYER FOR OUR FAMILY

None of this has turned out how we thought.

But we’re old enough to know that maybe we thought wrong to begin with.

Either way, we are also old enough to be exquisitely grateful

for the path we have walked together
for the moments when a single glance changed everything
and for the still-felt love of those who have gone on before us.

We see the beauty in the dented silver settings.

We smile to hear conversations as familiar as old songs.

Pause, now, and take a snapshot in your mind of this moment:

You – here now – in the shape you’re in –
not as new as you once were, but not as old as you will be.

Feel a hug from a distant friend
and, if you like, you can repeat my family’s toast,

“To those who are here, and those who are not.”

Amen.

© Samantha Bennett
https://therealsambennett.com/

P.S. If you would like to share this, please feel free – just be sure to include Sam’s name, copyright and website, OK? Thanks so much.

By The Way, You Look Really Great Today

ahem….I am officially a VERY big deal : )

Image of painted lines on the ground, including the word "zone"

So my friend Greg pings me the other day with a little audio clip of ME being featured on the Stuff You Should Know podcast….

and you could have knocked me over with a feather.

Because I’ve never been on that show.

I mean – SYSK is in the top 15 of ALL podcasts!

So how did it happen?

Turns out that LinkedIn Learning is a sponsor of SYSK, but you know how podcasts love to make their ads sound all chatty? Well, apparently they decided to feature one of my LinkedIn courses called, “Time Management for Busy People” and so the hosts talk about me and how awesome I am for a minute, and then they cut to an audio clip of me from the course, and then they go on to say that LinkedIn Learning is really great and people should check it out.

WOW.

So cool, right?

And here’s what I want you take away from this little story:

There are wheels turning you do not know about.

There are forces for good that are shaping your future right now.

There are opportunities that you never dreamed of (like being featured on one of the world’s most popular podcasts) that are unfolding.

BUT…

Success cannot find you if you keep yourself locked up.

Success cannot find you if you never show your work to anyone.

Success cannot find you if you never talk about what you do, or if you are always self-deprecating.

So please – share your creativity with someone today.

You never know what might happen.

Yours,
Sam.

P.S. If you want to hear the clip, just find the Stuff You Should Know podcast on whatever platform you use (Apple, Stitcher, Google, etc) and go to the episode that was posted on Tuesday, July 13, called “Radium Girls.” My bit is about 32 minutes in. Enjoy! – S.

By The Way, You Look Really Great Today

Inner Glass Ceilings- Part 1

The thing I thought we would talk about today is the inner glass ceilings- The self-limiting behavior that you may not even know that you have. This will be a 2-part blog post because I think this is so important, and I have a lot to say about it.

I did a call earlier this week with my friend, Susan Harrow, who’s a public relations expert and she has a little course about how to get featured in a magazine. I posted about it in this Facebook group. And I thought for sure you guys were going to go crazy for this.

I thought for sure, you’d be like, Oh, I would love to have my product in a magazine. I’d love to have my art in a magazine. I’d love to be quoted in a magazine. I’d love to have my essay featured in a magazine. I’d love to have my book in a magazine. I thought for sure you guys would be all over that, like white on rice.

And it’s not that you weren’t. I mean, people definitely enrolled and the response was good, but it was not as enthusiastic as I had expected it to be. And then I thought about it and I really sort of put on my empathy head, my empathy heart, and kind of tried to feel into what was going on. And I realized it was this.

That really, the idea of being in O magazine was not so much thrilling to a lot of you- it was terrifying. That level of success and visibility felt threatening. It felt like maybe it was something you wouldn’t be able to handle. What if everybody thinks I’m great and then you have to be great all the time.

What if I get overwhelmed? In a lot of ways it felt to me like y’all were just kind of taking yourself out of the game before you even had any information.

Before you even thought, well, I could go to the free thing about how a person gets featured in O magazine… I could do that much research just to see if it’s something I might want. Rather than just saying, Oh, no, no, no, that’s not for me. And I wrote a big post about it. It’s on this Facebook page, about how you were taught to be modest, you were taught to defer, you were taught don’t toot your own horn. Don’t think you’re so big. Don’t get too big for your britches. Who does she think she is?

Tall poppy syndrome, all that you were taught by your family, you were taught that by school, you were taught that by the culture. And even more, this sort of second level: everybody gets that “don’t toot your own horn” message, men and women alike, but then women get an extra little message that says, “let the men go first.”

“Don’t outsmart the boys. Don’t make the boys look bad, stay in the back. Be the power behind the throne. Be the supportive help. Everybody else’s things are more important than your things.” When women get rewarded for it, they don’t get rewarded. Women are expected to help everybody with everybody else’s thing first.

And if they put their own stuff first that’s selfish, right? She got that message. I certainly got that message. Everyone I know got that message. It’s not your fault. It’s no wonder that to suddenly fight back against a hundred years of cultural programming that says, do not seek out the spotlight for yourself, that when somebody says, hey, you could be in a magazine, you could be in the spotlight. You feel like, oh that doesn’t seem like such a good idea. It feels risky. It feels like I might get teased. It feels like I might get punished. It feels like people might not like me. And all those things are true.

I guarantee you, when your work starts to get more popular, there will be people who do not like you for sure. But what you find is that it matters less. When you’ve had five social media friends and one of them doesn’t like you, that’s a big deal, but if you’ve got 50,000 social media friends and 50 of them don’t like you, it’s not that big of a deal.

This post is transcribed from one of Sam's weekly "Secrets of Highly Productive People" Facebook Live events. Get reminders when Sam goes live by entering your information here:

A Revealing Exercise in Doodling

Here’s so here’s the little experiment I want to do with you guys.

I know you’ve got your paper and your pens ready, because you guys are known doodlers. If you don’t for some reason, grab a pen and a piece of paper.

Take your pen and I want you to draw a flower. Don’t think about it. Just draw it right now. Draw any flower you want. You can even just write the word “flower”. However you want to do it, just draw a flower

This version of you that just drew this flower… When I said draw a flower, any flower you want, that’s version one of you.

Okay. Now, new piece of paper, maybe same pen, maybe different pen. This is version two of you.

First, I want you to think about which flower you want to draw, which flower would be best to draw, which flower could you draw the best? Which flower haven’t you drawn in a while, or maybe one you used to draw, but you haven’t drawn in a while. Think about whether or not you have the skills to draw this flower. Think about what other people will think about you if you draw this flower. Think about all the other people who have already drawn flowers, and all the other people who were thinking about drawing flowers.

Do you really want to compete with them? I mean, maybe tomorrow would be a better day to draw a flower. Maybe even not a flower, maybe a star, maybe a barn, maybe a goat, maybe a goat in a barn with a star, maybe other flowers, maybe…

Are you getting my message. Have you seen through my clever road?

Stop second guessing yourself. If someone is outside your door right now and wants to give you $500 for a drawing of a flower, what do you have? You have a drawing of a flower and you could cheerfully receive that $500. You would say, yes, I have a flower.

What does version two get? How much influence does version two have? And what’s really sneaky is that you guys (I know you do this because I do it too), there’s something about that kind of thinking and overthinking and second guessing and double thinking and reconsidering and planning, planning, planning, and getting ready to get ready, and self-doubt- that feels good. That feels responsible.

One doesn’t want to just go off willy-nilly drawing flowers without any consideration. It seems better to sit and ponder. There are very few things in life that benefit from pondering.

I’m going to go ahead and say you were an artist, you know why? Because you just drew a flower. It’s a verb. If you’re doing it, you get to call yourself the verb. If you’re writing, you’re a writer. If you’re drawing, you’re an artist. If you’re singing, you’re a singer. If you’re teaching, you’re a teacher, right?

I’ve had people tell me I have no idea what I want. I’m soaked directionless. I never seen anything through. I’m still confused. And I say, okay, well, tell me what you’re thinking about. And then you go, well, I’m thinking this, this, this, and this. I’m like, right. So that’s not confused at all. Like that’s very clear that you’ve drawn a flower.

I was talking to somebody yesterday and I was helping her plan out a class she had in her mind for a long time. I said, well, how much you want to charge for this? And she was like, Oh gosh, I don’t know. I mean, that’s really the question that’s so confusing. I don’t know. And I said, okay, stop. Let’s do it the other way- how much money would you like to see coming from this?

And there’s this long pause. Well, I don’t know. I asked her, what number pops into your head first? She said, well, the number that popped into my head first was $10,000, but I mean, I… and I said, stop fine, $10,000 done.

And how many people do you think you could get in this class? I get another long pause. I’m like, okay, again, what number popped into your head first. She said 20? I’m like, great. So we have a good, better, best of 10, 15 or 20. I always want you to set three levels of goals. It’d be like, I have to be able to hit this goal. This would be great. And this would be a home run.

So good, better, best of 10, 15 or 20. Let’s charge $900 for this class. And it’s a 90 day thing- that’s nice, like $10 a day for this class. 900 bucks get 20 people in it, then you would have almost $20,000.

And she was like, wait, what? And I’m like, no, you decided, you knew the answer to all these questions. The answer bubbled up for you and then you swatted it away. No, no, that can’t be no, no, that’s not gonna be right. Oh, no, I can’t charge for that. Oh, no, maybe it’s in beta. Maybe I should charge less.

Quit it. Just quit it.

I want you to practice going with your first impulse. I want you to really start trusting your first thought. Especially in the areas where there’s no consequences, like drawing a flower. There’s no such thing as failure. Failure is just taking score too soon. Disappointment is taking score too soon. People don’t fail. They quit and you haven’t quit. You’re here. You’re right here with us. You’re doing it. You’re growing and changing.

Right now, you are harnessing the power of your creative energy. Right now, the transformation is happening. Maybe it didn’t happen in any of the previous days of your life. Maybe you’ve got 50 years that not happening. And right now it’s happening. That’s a miracle, you’re positioned for a miracle.

So that’s my little flower exercise. Draw a flower or think about drawing a flower. Which is more productive?