Being Not Doing!

Learn to Do Less
Too often we mistakenly believe that doing less makes us lazy and results in a lack of productivity. Instead, doing less helps us savor what we do accomplish. We learn to do less of what is extraneous and engage in fewer self-defeating behaviors, so we craft a productive life that we truly feel good about.
- Marc Lesser, "Do Less, Accomplish More"


I subscribe to a Daily Dharma e-mail and I am not sure how to link to it properly as it is on the Tricycle website for today, but may not be tomorrow, but this was today's quote and I found it so fitting for me.  I just hope I have it all properly linked and referenced.  And the longer article is also linked after the author's name.


In any case, my life has been built around trying to justify my existence.  There are a lot of reasons for that, dating way back to my earliest childhood, and I've written about some of this before on my blog, but it is hard for me not to be doing all the time, not to be giving, helping others, producing in some way, etc.    And now, having lived on adrenalin for so many years, my body is exhausted, and I simply can't keep up the pace, since for most of my life I've done all my frantic productive activities without taking care of myself first, and I'm learning that that simply won't work for anyone.  The best thing any of us can do for the universe at large is to love ourselves and have compassion for ourselves.  Without that, we can't show love or compassion toward anyone else.


And so days where I move more slowly and take time for reading and writing, even though those days seem to the action oriented me to lack productivity, those days I'm learning are actually probably my most productive in terms of finding myself and honoring my path.  Certainly taking time to savor each moment, each activity, each quiet space (if one can find a quiet space when the roof is being torn off one's home!), is time very well spent and in fact is vital to any individual's well-being.


Therefore, as my so called productive activities are on hold--all my quilting and weaving, and today even my tutoring--as my remodel reaches the peak of its chaos, I am realizing this is the perfect opportunity for me to try to learn to do less, as the author of this quote says, to engage in fewer self-defeating behaviors, and instead open myself up to new possibilities, stay quiet so I can hear new opportunities, enjoy the moment and then see if I can capture that moment in haiku or journal entries, etc. to help stay fully present and savor each and every day.