Something I want to tell you before you listen to Episode 3.
I recorded this one three times. Not because the content was wrong. I knew what I wanted to say from the start. But I kept talking around it instead of at it.
The topic is busyness. I know. Every productivity podcast has been here. But that's not the angle.
The angle is: what if being busy is the smartest thing you've ever done?
Not a compliment. An observation.
For a long time, I kept myself occupied. Not overwhelmed, not running on empty. Just never quite still. There was always a next thing to figure out, plan, work toward. And for a while I didn't think much of it. That's just who I am, I thought. That's how I operate.
What I've started to understand, slowly and not without some resistance, is that all that motion was doing something specific. It was keeping me from having to sit with questions I didn't have answers to yet. The "what do I actually want" questions. The "is this what I would have chosen" questions. The ones that, when they surface, feel like you have to do something with them right now.
Staying busy was a way of not having to. And it worked. For years.
The harder thing to admit is that I didn't even know I was doing it until I stopped.
The Science:
Your brain has a resting state. Neuroscientists call it the Default Mode Network. It activates when you're not focused on a task. Not meditating, not solving anything. Just not doing.
And when it comes online, it processes emotion. It consolidates memory. It generates insight. It wanders into the future and tries to make sense of things. It does some of the most important thinking your brain ever does.
Most of us have spent years training ourselves to treat that state as a problem. Something comes up when we stop, a question, a feeling, a thought we didn't invite, and we reach for something. The phone, the task, the next thing. We've essentially taught ourselves to be afraid of our own brain at rest.
Not because we're broken. Because the resting state surfaces things we're not sure we're ready to look at.
Try This:
Same one from the episode, but here you have a little more room to sit with it first.
Pick one ten-minute window this week. No screen. No task. No podcast in the background. Walk slowly, lie on the floor, sit in your car after you park. Whatever creates the conditions where you're not taking anything in.
You're not meditating. I struggle with it myself, honestly, which is part of why this is the ask instead. You're not trying to figure anything out. You're collecting information.
Notice what comes up. Notice what you want to reach for. Notice if the discomfort has a shape to it.
That's the data. Not what the thoughts say. That you had them.
Work with Me: I take on a small number of coaching clients. If you've been reading this newsletter and the same question keeps surfacing, there's a next step available. The first step is a discovery session.
Have a question you want me to dig into? Reply to this email or DM me on Instagram @18healing.
I'm in it with you.
Ilana