Is Your To-Do List Keeping You From Happiness?
There was a time in my life when everything was about the next step, the next goal and the next achievement.
I was a living To-Do list, actually I mapped my life out in four squares and wrote a list in each square:
Work To-do list (this was the longest and also most time requiring list
Hobby company list (yes, apart from working long hours as a manager, I also had a small private company as a horse-riding instructor)
Personal To-do list (here I put down things like dentist appointments, personal development etc. This list never seemed to be checked off though)
Family / Relationship / Friends (this was for some reason always the shortest one)
Does this sound like a good plan for life?
Well, I did get a lot of things done, so if your goal is to get a lot of things done in all areas of your life, in minimum time, this is one way.
If you see life as a race where the one who’ll get most things done before they die as a winner in life, this way of planning makes sense.
However, “winning” in this sense, comes at a price:
The price of stress, overwhelm and potentially also weak health (I know that you probably already heard this, but hear me out please).
To be enslaved by your To-Do list comes at the price of damaging your sanity and your closest relationships.
I’m not (yet) a psychologist, though I’m studying to hopefully get a psychology degree someday.
I’m one of those women who decided to jump off the rat race and take some new perspectives on life, through gaining new awareness, spiritual, physical and relationship wise.
And what I’ve come to understand is this:
When we fill our lives with endless To-do lists, with goal after goal, constantly chasing after the next thing that will make us happy and fulfilled, constantly wanting more, wanting recognition etc - it’s actually a TRAUMA RESPONSE.
We fill an empty hole inside of us with DOING. It’s like numbing ourselves. The more we do, the more we numb.
Many of the women I’ve spoken to during my last three years as a coach, have told me the same thing. The reason we chase success or completion through doing, is because we have a belief that it will someday make us like ourselves better.
We believe it will make us more lovable, that we will be accepted and loved.
We believe that if we are successful people will like us.
WRONG.
People don’t like you because you’re successful. Sometimes it’s quite the opposite.
Admiration, yes. But liking or loving, no.
I know that you may have grown up in an environment where the only way to get recognition was by succeeding. Be good at sports, get good grades in school, please your parents with skills….
I know you might have felt it like this was the only way to get their attention and LOVE.
But this is not the kind of love that will fill the emptiness inside.
We aren’t robots. We’re not meant to constantly DO, constantly produce and compete. Especially not as women.
We are meant to be able to rest in our stillness. Only in stillness that emptiness can be filled, and the only thing that can really fill it is GOD.
But when we’re in survival mode, performing & doing, God can’t reach us. We can’t feel His love for us so we seek it on the outside.
This affects our closest relationships as well. The stress spills over into private life, it makes us snap at our kids, and our partners too. We get angry because we have to do so much, and we want them to be doing more, too.
I call all this DOING, thinking, action oriented energy inside of us “Masculine energy”.
I call the STILLNESS, being, feeling, open and receiving energy “Feminine energy”.
As women, we need a balance between these two.
If we’re always in our masculine energy, the life we’re meant to live as women will suffer.
We will have a hard time getting pregnant. We will catch autoimmune diseases. We will feel lonely and depleted. We will feel torn and regretful when it comes to our children.
It’s time to take a step back today and ask yourself:
Do I even know what feminine energy feels like?
Do I even know what it’s like to be still and open to receive?
And what is it, that I’m really missing inside, that is making me cover up my emptiness with all the doing?
Only in that still, open, receiving place we will be able to receive God. Only in this place can we hear His voice and understand his will with us. Only when we allow ourselves - man or woman - to rest for a moment in our feminine energy, we will gain the clarity of Gods Love for us.
Eva x