The Badge of Busyness...

The first time I heard this phrase, I was so offended. 😆 I mean, who wears being busy like a badge? Like an award of honor? No one does...right?
Wrong.
I do. You do. We all do.
"What do you mean?" You ask?
Think about your last week's worth of social media posts. How many of them noted your running like crazy between ball games or school or work or meetings? How many listed the lengthy schedule you accomplished that day? How many invites did you decline with the explanation of "I've got too much to do?"


Now, there isn't anything particularly wrong with this, per say. It doesn't REALLY harm anything, right? No, not really (except some can make it quite the annoying 1-upping game), but what if there is an area of your life where it IS actually hurting you?

If you're the owner of a small business, home based, MLM, direct sales, whatever you want to call it, flashing this badge can be quite detrimental to your goals.

While in one post or message you ask for friends or customers to book a party or host a fundraiser or even join your team so you can joyfully mentor them along the way, you're making another post talking about how exhausted you are and how you can't take anything else on without drowning.

See what's happening there? You just told those same people you're too busy for them.

Let me give you another example. Say I need to get my car detailed and I have a friend who does that for a living. I hop on their social media to send a quick message to set an appointment, but in the meantime, see that they're talking about how swamped they are, how they're running from her to there and how they feel like they have no time. Do you think I'll feel inclined to send them a message to set that appointment? No way. Because now I've moved from feeling like I was supporting them, to being one more 'to do' on their list & adding to their overwhelmed feeling. Nobody wants to be that person, right?

In my role in my Scentsy business, if I'm sharing the join opportunity and my desire to lead others to reaching their goals, but talk about how tired I am all the time, what am I really saying to those possibly thinking about joining? Possibly, that they would really be more of a burden than the blessing they really would be.

The truth is we are ALL busy. All of us. We are busy with different things, yes, but we all have schedules that sometimes seem impossible to juggle and sometimes actually are. Some of us manage time well and some not so much, yet, for some reason, we flash our busyness around like we are most definitely busier than anyone else could possibly be, instead of just agreeing that we all have our own crazy to manage. Hence, becoming a badge we were maybe all too proudly.

What if instead, we just learned to handle that busy. We were better about that time management or delegating and left our social media world to things that supported our end goal instead of self sabotaging it.
What if we agreed that we all had schedules that were nuts, mostly by our own choosing, because we have WAY more control over it than we want to take responsibility for, but left the details off the forum that we use to grow a business with.

I will never tell someone what to post and what not to post on their social media. Free speech and all, but I think it's so important for us to be prudent, especially when running a business, to carefully consider what we do share and truly decide whether or not that one post could be helping us build a better business or, inadvertently, making it fall apart.

Does your post encourage people to let you serve them & their need of your business?
Does another post contradict that desire?

Let's not make people feel guilty for letting us serve them. Instead, let it be something we urge on.

Today, let's agree to wear the badge of busyness no longer. There is no honor in being busy. Busy is normal. It is what it is. Instead, let's be purposeful in all we say and do knowing that the dreams we are chasing call for us to be intentional & not just busy.