You’re not alone. Crazy busy is the norm for most people. But crazy doesn’t have to be followed by the word busy.
I was reminded of this recently when my daughter laughingly called our family crazy. As I vehemently denied it she started making a list of our special kind of crazy:
- A year spent traveling around the world.
- A slavish devotion to the potato.
- Traveling from Denver to Boston for a wedding via Chicago, Maine and Nova Scotia (11 states + 4 provinces in 3 weeks.)
- On a whim adding Ukraine onto our trip to Ireland + Poland.
- Extending a long weekend of canyoneering in MOAB into a 2-week road trip to California.
- Driving over 3,000 miles so our dog could play in the ocean.
- Traveling to Segesta in Sicily just to see a temple.
- Feeling the earth move under our feet as we climbed up a live Volcano.
- Getting pulled over by the Moroccan and Austrian police.
- Finding and exploring a bat cave in Malaysia… then doing it again in Australia despite the copious amount of guano.
- Having a child joyfully diagnosed with Typhoid in Pai.
- Being evacuated from Splash Mountain.
- Inner tubing through a cattle herd (and their poop) in Lao.
- Moving my 4 year old closer to the tree so he could better see the Viper.
and the list went on….
Every last experience she mentioned made me laugh and smile. That’s how I knew that even though the word crazy was attached, it was crazy good!
It was the kind of crazy I could be proud of.
But there are all sorts of other kinds of crazy that don’t feel as good.
Crazy busy for instance.
We hear crazy busy all the time. In fact, it’s often worn like a badge of honor. Uttered in the reverent tone of a humble brag.
It can even make us feel important, essential and needed.
Yet crazy busy seldom makes us laugh and smile. In fact, as we rush from activity to activity we often forget to find the joy in what we’re doing.
And then we act even crazier when being crazy busy doesn’t produce that crazy good feeling we’re hoping for. We dive deeper… creating more busyness in an attempt to feel better… which makes us feel even crazier… but not the good kind of crazy we’re actually craving.
If you’re feeling crazy busy and realize it’s not making you feel crazy good try this crazy easy solution.
Try eliminating the word busy from your vocabulary for one week.
For example, when asked, “How are you?” instead of responding, “Crazy busy!” try “I have a crazy good day planned… and then reframe something in your day from busy to good and add elaborate “…I’m looking forward to picking my daughter up after soccer practice because the time together in the car allows us to decompress and giggle before I start dinner and she starts homework.”
When I tried this simple semantics trick of trading ‘crazy good’ for ‘crazy busy’ and then reframed one “busy” activity into something to look forward to I noticed a shift in my thinking that felt crazy good!
When I laugh back over our family’s special kind of crazy I notice that it is rooted in busy… but a very different kind of busy. It’s rooted in the kind of busy that is based on being being together and engaged in the moment. It’s the kind of busy where you lose track of time. The kind of busy that feels good. In other words, crazy and busy, but far from crazy busy.
Originally published at lisaculhane.com on September 13, 2016.
Originally published at medium.com