"Words do not label things already there. Words are like the knife of the carver: they free the idea, the thing, from the general formlessness of the outside. As a man speaks, not only is his language in a state of birth, but also the very thing about which he is talking." -- ESKIMO QUOTE as in PARABOLA MAGAZINE

Have you considered…

Conversations are a bit like yawning?

Have you ever noticed that some conversations seem to run rampant in communities? Take, for instance, the conversation that is being shared by people all over the United States; that conversation goes like this, "I'm SO busy!" Have you ever thought of what it means to be "SO busy" and how it seems as if everyone you talk to lives in the conversation, "I'm so busy?"

Interesting. It seems as if that conversation alone is actually contagious, yes, contagious in the same sense that yawns are contagious.

Think about the analogy I just referred to…yawns. As a matter of fact, I'm yawning right now and I even got a great night of sleep last night! Just the word, yawn, brings to the forefront that there is a yawn waiting to be experienced. Whoops! I just yawned my second yawn and am suppressing my third…nope! No such luck. I yawned. Yawns are contagious. That's all there is to it and I bet you've had to stifle one yourself in the last few minutes. Plus, if you are in a public place and someone saw you yawn, I'll bet that they too, have yawned in the last few minutes since seeing you (or I) yawn and then someone saw him or her and off we go! A contagious yawn running rampant around the world!

Now if we use the same rationale for how conversations run rampant like a contagious yawn, think of the conversation "I'm SO busy" and how it's showing up in the unlikeliest of places. People have been doing the same things over and over again, and people are going to work and returning from work very much around the same times they always have, and there have always been 'action items' around what needs to be completed next.

How about farmers who have tons of things to do from waking up before dawn, making breakfast, eating it, cleaning up, getting out to the barn, hitching up the animals, taking them out to the field, plowing the field, and on and on (I'm just making up that I know what happens on a farm). Oh yes! Don't forget about gathering the eggs, feeding the chickens, and whatever else there is to do like milking the cow and butchering…well, we don't have to go there. In all the shows I've seen where there are farmers who are getting their long lists of chores done, up until about two or three years ago, I never once heard anyone say on one of those shows, "I'm SO busy!" and yes, there is emphasis on that word SO!

All I'm saying is that perhaps we are not as busy as we make out that we are and that someone actually invented the conversation of being busy. Based on my earlier theory, the rest of us have caught that contagious conversation unaware of how it is affecting us or need I say, our well being.

Even though we move from one chosen undertaking to the next, the conversation that was made up, "busyness," for which many of us have gotten caught up in, not dissimilar to a yawn in fact, is perhaps distracting us from realizing that the emotions that go along with being "SO busy" may not be ones that are supporting us in having a fulfilled life.

Think about it, and I request that you be detached from the possible assessments you have of what I am saying (you know, the ones where you can prove to me that, "yes, but with me I really AM busy)! Let me tell you about what I'm doing in MY life!" This contagious conversation may be a clue that we might not be acknowledging ourselves and our ability to see that we are actually the ones who are choosing the conversation, or even the state of being, busy.

The choices that we make of living in a perpetual state of assessment of "busyness" and "so much to do" and "not enough time," etc., seem to me to be the antithesis of living a life full of passion and fulfillment, and seem to distract us from the accomplishments in our lives, much like with a yawn distorting our faces and maybe our ability to see or hear while in the yawn.

So, the next time you hear or say "I'm SO busy," step back, observe and see if there may be another more powerful conversation from which to choose to live. And then let me know what you find out!

~ Patricia Hirsch, MBA, Master Certified Coach