541. Better Than Busy

Are you busy? Would you describe yourself as someone who’s busy? Do you relate when people say, well, yeah, we’re all busy? If so, I want to suggest to you that busy is no way to live your life. It’s exhausting, and it’s actually a waste of your life. It’s not creating probably your most ideal results. It’s certainly not enjoyable for most of us. And that’s why I want to talk to you about a life that is better than busy. Welcome to Better Than Happy. Let’s do it.

Welcome to Better Than Happy, the podcast where we transform our lives by transforming ourselves. My name is Jody Moore. In the decade-plus I’ve been working with clients as a Master Certified Coach, I’ve helped tens of thousands of people to become empowered. And from empowered, the things that seemed hard become trivial, and the things that seemed impossible become available, and suddenly, a whole new world of desire and possibility open up to you. And what do you do with that?

Well, that’s the question… what will you do? Let’s find out.

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On this live, interactive Zoom call with me, you’ll get a taste of the power of this work when applied in real life. You can participate, or be a silent observer. But you have to take a step if you want to truly see change in your life… two steps, actually. Head to JodyMoore.com/freecoaching and register. Then you just have to show up. Your best life is waiting for you. Will you show up for it? JodyMoore.com/freecoaching. I’ll see you there.

Hello, my friends. Welcome to the podcast. Thanks so much for tuning in today. I have a great episode that you’re going to love. It’s called Better Than Busy. Kind of goes along with better than happy. See what I did there?

Okay, so I want to tell you why I chose this topic, and we’re going to dive right into it. My sister, Natalie and I were just talking the other day about how good we feel when we get things done. We both were having one of those kind of weeks where we’re like, oh my gosh, I finally cleaned out those cupboards that I’ve been putting off cleaning out for so long, and it feels so good to have it done, and I’m just feeling so on top of things, and I was so productive this morning, and I finally made that call or figured out that thing that I’d been putting off. Both she and I were feeling that way a lot this week.

And it’s true. That’s such a good feeling, right? To get things done, to feel like you’re kind of on top of things, and to feel like you’re being productive. And I try to remind myself that I don’t have to be that way all the time, and I shouldn’t expect perfection of myself at all, but I definitely want more of that kind of feeling in my life. Like I’m focused on the right things. I’m not procrastinating. I’m getting, you know, done things that matter to me, things that are important.

And again, I want more of that in my life. So did my sister, and I bet that you do too. And that’s what I want to talk to you about here today. So listen up. One of the things I hear the most from people who I don’t see regularly, just people who kind of are observing me from afar, and they think they know what my life is like. They say things like, you must be so busy. The reason I give that disclaimer is because I don’t hear this from like my kids or my husband. They see my life. They know what I’m doing. It’s people who don’t really see my day-to-day routine. They’ll say, you must be so busy.

Now, why are they saying this to me? Why do they think I must be so busy? Well, first of all, it’s kind of something we just say in our culture to one another. It’s kind of a way of, I feel like at least when I say it to people or when people have said it to me in the past, that they’re trying to compliment me. Like, you’re so productive, you’re getting so many things done. Or they see the results that I’ve created, or I see results that they’ve created, and I think, wow, you must be really busy to be achieving so many things. Like I can think about people that I’ve said this to recently, and they’re people who I really respect and I really admire. And so we offer that word busy almost as like a compliment. Again, I’m just as guilty of this as anyone else.

So for me, when people say that to me, I understand that I think they’re kind of trying to compliment me, right? I have this podcast I’ve been producing for a long time. I have a business with a team of employees and I have lots of clients all over the world. And so I’m creating courses, I’m doing coaching calls and live events and et cetera. I’m very active in my church, and I attend a lot of meetings and activities and I serve in my church. I like to go on walks, and I go to the gym regularly, probably not as regularly as I should lately, actually. I got to get better at getting to the gym. I need someone to yell at me about that.

But anyway, I like to play the piano. I’ll sit down and play the piano just for leisure, for my own enjoyment. I like TV and movies and even wasting time on social media and things like that, right? So I do all those things, and so people think I must be busy. But am I busy? I will tell you, the answer is no. I’m not.

And I wish I could say that’s always true, but it’s not always true. I have moments of busy when I get off track and stop thinking about or doing the things that I’m going to offer to you today. But I would say a good 80% of the time, I am not busy. I pick my kids up at the end of the day from school, and then I rarely work after that. I make dinner most days. I grocery shop, which some people are like, why do you grocery shop in today’s world? Don’t you know about Walmart delivery or whatever? But you know what? It’s actually, for me, easier to go in the store and pick out all the things than to sit down on the computer and figure out what I need and all of that. So anyway, that’s a whole other thing that you could coach me on one day. But I was going to say I enjoy grocery shopping, but that would be a lie. I don’t enjoy it. I dislike grocery shopping in a store less than I dislike grocery shopping online. Okay, there.

Anyway, like I said, I like to play the piano. I like to watch TV. I like to take naps. I always take a really good Sunday nap, but lately at least two or three days during the week, I also take a little nap just like at, I don’t know, 3:30 or 4 in the afternoon, just like a little 20 minute nap on the couch. I think I’m just getting older. I don’t know. Anyway. So that’s what my life looks like, honestly.

Now, I’ve always been good at the part where I make sure and have time to watch TV, scroll social media, take a nap. What I haven’t always been good at is getting done all the other things that I wanted to get done, okay? When it came to either my job or school when I was a student or my business, which has been the last 12 years. I was a terrible procrastinator, okay? I felt extremely overwhelmed and busy a lot before I discovered what I’m going to teach you today.

I was always a self-proclaimed spontaneous non-planner. I still think of myself that way, actually. I see people who love planning. I have a really amazing employee on my team who’s this way. She loves to plan. She’s very good at it. That’s why she’s our project coordinator. And she loves to organize. She thinks about the future and including all the details. She is a natural planner, I would say, or she’s gotten good at planning. I am not a natural planner. I don’t love it. I’m not detail oriented, and I would much rather be spontaneous and kind of figure things out as I go.

So I tell you all that because if you’re anything like me and you’re tired of being busy and overwhelmed, but you’re like, I know, I’m supposed to plan ahead, but that’s just not how I work, and I’m a procrastinator, then listen up, my friend, because about 10 years ago, I realized this is not creating what I want in my life and I’m tired of feeling this way. And so I started living differently. I started living by a system that I now call Better Than Busy. It’s a whole system that I’m actually teaching in January in a full five-day challenge, which I’ll tell you about how to get later if you decide you want to come and join me for that. It also includes actually my exclusive planner that I use and a bunch of other tools that I’m going to give you.

So if you want that, I’ll tell you how to get it. But really for today, I just wanted to give you a head start and explain to you what it means to be better than busy and that this is possible. This is available to you. Not only is it possible and available, but I actually think it’s the best way to live your life. So instead of saying to one another, you must be so busy, what if we were like, wow, what you’re creating in your life is so amazing, and you don’t seem to be busy. How impressive. How are you doing that? That’s actually much more impressive to me, right? Than the person that is frantically running around creating results.

So the simple answer, right? And we’ll come back to this in a minute, but the simple solution is people say, well, you need to say no to things. You need to not have so many things on your plate. And for some people that’s true, but that’s not what I’m going to be teaching you today. What I’m going to teach you is how to still do all the things you want to and not be busy. Okay?

So let’s start out with a definition of busy. What does it even mean to be busy? I believe, and the way I want you to think about it today is that busy is a state of being, okay? Busy is an internal experience that happens in our minds with our thoughts, and then our emotions, internal, right? And then it shows up in our behaviors. Okay? So it’s a state of being, busy. Does that make sense to everyone? Does that sound like a fair definition? Okay.

So if it’s those things, if it’s our thoughts and our emotions and our behaviors, then let’s explore each of those for just a minute. What kinds of thoughts create the state of busy? What are the thoughts that you’re having when you’re feeling busy? They’re usually thoughts like, there’s so much to do. How am I ever going to get all of this done? And when you have a thought that’s a question like that, how am I ever going to get all this done? By the way, your lower default subconscious brain answers it with something like, you’re not. How am I going to get all this done? You’re not going to. It’s going to be terrible.

Now, your conscious logical brain knows that you’ll get done what you need to and it’ll be fine. But your lower subconscious brain is answering it if you’re not paying attention to your thinking. Okay? So those kinds of thoughts, there’s so much to do. I got to get this all done today or I’m going to be in trouble if I don’t get this done, or I’m behind, or I have to do everything. Okay? These are the kinds of thoughts that create a state of being, right?

So those kinds of thoughts create what kinds of emotions for us then? Overwhelm, stress, anxiety. Those are the three most common ones people tell me. So if I’m thinking, there’s so much to do, I’m never going to get it all done, poor me, and I feel overwhelmed and stressed and anxious, then think about how I behave. What do you do? How do you show up and how do you do it from the emotions of stress and anxiety? Well, we tend to be rushed, which means we’re more likely to make mistakes. This means our work becomes lower quality. We either just produce lower quality work or we have to go back and fix things, which means it takes even longer. We may get temporary results from this state, but often we’re not getting the overall quality of results that we want. Not to mention, it results in a lower quality of life as we go about doing whatever we’re doing.

My favorite example of this, because I like simple examples to show my brain, this is not useful. This busy thing that you’re doing, this hurried, rushed, frantic energy that you’re operating from is not useful because my brain thinks it’s useful, right? It’s like, I’m going to help you speed up by putting lots of pressure on you, and I’m going to help you focus by telling you better pay attention or else you’re going to be in trouble. That’s all your brain’s trying to do, right?

So this is my favorite example is putting on mascara. So if you’ve never put on mascara, just stay with me. Try it out. See if you can understand. But if you have put on mascara, you know that when you put on your mascara, if you go too fast, if you’re in a real rush and you hurry and try to slap mascara on your face, what happens? You get it on your face instead of just on your eyelashes. You get it on your eyelids. You get it underneath your eyes. And then what do you have to do? Well mascara is kind of sticky and so it doesn’t usually just wipe off with your finger.

If you, depending on what kind of mascara you have, but if you try to wipe it off with your finger, you’re probably going to smudge a black line across your eyelid or under your eye. And so instead you have to maybe get a Q-tip and maybe you have to get some makeup remover or whatever and you have to go in and fix your face wherever you got mascara on it and then you go to try to put your mascara on again but by now the first coat of mascara dried a little bit on your eyelashes so they’re clumped together and your mascara does not turn out great. Right?

This is what happens putting on mascara in a rush, even though your brain thinks it’s useful to go, you better hurry up because you’re going to be late. And on a grander scale, little things like that are happening all over our life. We’re making it harder. We’re making more mistakes. We’re having to go back and clean up messes, or we’re overlooking things, or we’re not calculating correctly. And so we’re not creating the kinds of results that we want. Like I said, not to mention it doesn’t feel very good. The other tragedy, I think, about this busy way that we live our lives is when I’m getting up every morning and I’m busy and then I go to sleep exhausted and I get up and do it again the next day, I’m living this unexamined life. I’m not reexamining my life choices very often because I don’t have the capacity to do it. I don’t have the time. I don’t have the mental bandwidth. I don’t have the energy.

And so we become somewhat robotic of continuing to live out past choices. Now, many of our past choices we want to keep living out, but not all of them. And so your life can easily feel like it’s passing you by when you’re in this busy state. Let me give another example. So I used to work in a job where we had deadlines every month and we had certain quotas we had to hit every month. It was a sales job. And so we’d be, you know, in January talking about what we’re going to do in February or March, and then in February, we’re talking about what we’re going to do in March and April.

And because we were constantly thinking about what was going to happen the next month, what we needed to get done, I constantly felt stressed and busy. And I remember saying one time, my life is like flying by in these deadline dates, I feel like. So there wasn’t a lot of time to slow down and question, wait, does this even make sense that we look at it monthly? And do we want to keep operating and running our department or our company in this way? Because you didn’t have time for that, because the next deadline was coming right at you like a freight train and you just had to keep moving. That’s what busy tends to do, is just cause us not to think about those opportunities.

The next thing I think is such a tragedy about busy, especially if we take it to our day-to-day life, is it causes us to miss out on the good stuff, right? I have a friend who’s an interior designer, and she made this comment one time, we were talking about, you know, furniture in the house and she said, people have to remember that your life happens in the space in between the furniture. And of course, she was talking about interior decor, but for some reason, that has just stuck with me in so many ways. Like I realize the good moments, the best moments in my life happen in between the scheduled things, the things that we need to get done, or the things that are part of our routine.

Like yeah, sometimes at dinner we have a fun conversation. Even sometimes while making dinner, we might have a fun moment together as a family. But it’s often the little unplanned moments. For example, the other day, my daughter and I were watching Spirited, which is a holiday show because we already kicked off Christmas at our house. So it’s a Christmas movie with Ryan Reynolds and Will Ferrell, and it’s a musical, but it’s kind of a satire on musicals and a remake of classic Christmas Carol story. And anyway, we were watching it and the opening song, one of the first songs, is this really dramatic, you know, musical showtune, dancing over the top scene. And my 10, no, he’s not 10, he’s 12, sorry. My twelve-year-old son started kind of like imitating the dance and following along and I was like, that’s hilarious.

And he’d been wanting to earn some money to buy a game and I said, if you learn that dance, I’ll give you the rest of the money for your game. And he’s like, okay. So he got on his iPad and he learned it and then he performed it for us. And we were laughing so hard. It was just like this moment, right? Those moments that I never could have planned, that none of us predicted, only happened because I had time to sit there and enjoy a movie and joke with my kids. And those are the moments that we remember and that connect us. And we all want more of that in our lives. At the same time, we’ve got a bunch of things we need to get done, right? I get it.

So let’s not be busy. I’m trying to sell you here on not being busy, and I know you’re already sold on it. You don’t like that feeling, but there’s a part of your brain again that thinks it’s useful that I’m trying to sell here. So you got to keep reminding yourself, this is not useful. We’re not going to do this as much as possible. All right. Now, let’s talk about what creates this state of busy then. It is not your to-do list. It is not how many things you have on that list. It is not other people’s demands or requests of you. It’s not how many children you have. It’s not even your job or your boss or the demands of that job or that boss. Those things are outside of you. Okay?

So remember, busy is a state of being. You are creating it with your thoughts, your emotions, and your behaviors. You are the only one capable of creating your own state of being. Now, other people will try to influence your state of being, possibly, and they may influence you, but they do not determine your state of being. You do if you choose to do so consciously. And so this means that there’s internal work to be done, which happens to be my specialty as a coach and what I help you with here, right?

So the external part of it, again, what you do, how you behave is only a very small part of it. But like I said in the beginning, most people start there. So let’s just start there. Let’s just dive in. Okay? First thing you can do when it comes to your behaviors is you can say no and you can take some things off your schedule. Again, some of you might want to do that. I’m all for it if you want to do that. If you need some help being okay with other people’s emotions, I highly recommend you get some coaching on that.

That’s the number one thing I hear, why I don’t want to disappoint people, I don’t want people to think I’m irresponsible, I don’t want people to think that I’m flaky. These are all things that have come up recently in coaching on this topic. And so there’s some good internal work that needs to be done around realizing that you’re not responsible for other people’s emotions or opinions or lives, but you are 100% responsible for yours. So are you going to try to manage their emotions, which is not even entirely in your control, or you’re going to manage your emotions and your life? Sometimes we have to make a choice. So again, come and get some coaching on my free coaching workshop if necessary, and I could help you with that.

Now, most people, when they think about removing something from their plate, they start with their own stuff for this reason, right? They don’t want to disappoint other people, and they don’t think that it’s possible to stop meeting people’s expectations the way they maybe have been in the past. And so we tend to sacrifice our own stuff first. We stop with whatever self-care we might be participating in. We cut out projects that just feel like passion projects. I have had so many women especially come on to coaching calls and tell me, I want to do this thing, but it’s going to take time away from whatever other thing, my family or whatever other thing they may be doing, and that feels selfish, to which I say, okay, and what’s the problem again? Are you telling me you shouldn’t be selfish in this way if selfish equals creating the life that you want, even if it means other people might have to take some responsibility for their own lives? You’re telling me you shouldn’t be doing that? Because I beg to differ. Okay?

So anyway, most people will cut out their own stuff though because it’s easier than dealing with the fact that other people are allowed to feel whatever they feel and have their opinions. Now obviously you’re not going to stop taking care of your kids. You’re not going to drop the ball at work, right? And I’m not saying you have to do that. I’m saying like reassess, if you’re going to cut something out, do not start with your stuff. Start with getting more honest and clear with people, having boundaries, giving people the benefit of the doubt.

I got to tell you guys something. Your kids are capable of figuring it out more than probably what you’re letting them figure out, if you’re anything like me and everyone else I know. Okay? It’s good for our kids to figure stuff out. I’m not saying neglect them. I’m not saying let them go hungry or don’t, you know, make sure that they’re safe. I’m just saying give them a chance to be a little bit more independent. Give them a chance to rely on each other or somebody else in their life. It doesn’t have to be all you.

So my approach for this, and I’m going to teach this in more detail, we’re going to do this together at again, better than busy happening in January, but my approach is that you begin your planning of what you’re going to do in your day with the you stuff, the stuff that’s for you. Okay? It kind of goes along with the concept from a book by Mike Michalowicz. Is that how you say your name, Mike? Mike Michalowicz. He wrote a book called Profit First that’s all about how most businesses, they take their revenue, right? And then they subtract their expenses, and then what is left over becomes profit. And he says you should do it in the reverse order. You should take your revenue and you subtract what you want to take as profit, and then whatever’s left over, you get to use on expenses. It causes you to be a lot more creative with your expenses. It causes you to be wiser and make better choices about the money that you’re spending in your business.

And so that’s how I want you to think about your time. It’s not that I don’t want you to take care of the people around you and show up and serve whenever you want to, but I want you to begin with, this is what I need to do for me. Okay? And this is what I want to do. This is what I choose to do for me. I want to spend my time doing these things. And then what time is left over, that gets allocated to the other things in my life. Now, this requires knowing what you want, and it requires understanding your reasons and your motivations because we want to get in touch with as much as possible our true desires, if that’s even a thing. What I mean by true desires, like, I don’t know, you could argue that none of us have true desires. Like if I desire, I don’t know, to go on a trip somewhere, is it a true desire? Did God plant that in my heart, or did I see somebody else go on a trip and then learned that you could go on trips like that and then decided maybe I want to go on a trip like that. So I really got the idea from someone else.

So we could argue that. But my point is, I don’t want you making decisions from FOMO or scarcity. Like, I need to prove something or maybe I’m missing out on something. That’s not ideal. What I’m talking about is like, I just want to do that thing. I don’t know. It just sounds fun. Not like I need to impress people.

Some of you are working on projects or building businesses or something, and you’re telling yourself that you’ve got to get to a certain point. And until you get to that point, you don’t believe that you’re legit or worthy, or you’re not approving of yourself in some way. That’s not what I’m talking about. We got to clean all that up. You don’t need to get anything done. You don’t need to achieve any certain result. You don’t need to have a certain experience or live your life in a certain way to be worthy. Okay? But do you just want to? Because you’re just like, I don’t know, that looks like fun. I kind of want to experience that. I want to see what that’s like. That’s what I want you to be making the time for in your life. Okay?

Now, I also operate from this belief, which is different from what a lot of people believe. So listen up, okay? Because a lot of people will say things like, well, you know, you can’t do everything, and there’s a time and a season for certain things, and when you say yes to something, you’re saying no to something else. Now, I get it. Those can all be useful, true thoughts in certain cases. But I want to offer you another one to consider in other times, which is that anything you have the desire to do, you have the capacity to do. I genuinely believe this is true. And I don’t know about you, but I found that my desires change over time. So when people say to me, why I really want to grow my business, but I just don’t think now’s the time because I’m homeschooling my kids or whatever, okay? They’ll say, one day I’m going to work on my business. But in my mind, I think, what if one day you decide you don’t want to work on your business?

First of all, that’s okay. You don’t have to. But if you want to right now, I promise you have the capacity to do it. And as we talk it through, sometimes it means they shouldn’t be homeschooling their kids because they’re only doing it for reasons that are again, based in scarcity or FOMO. Other times, it means you have the capacity to homeschool your kids and build your business. You know how I know? Because you have abundant true desire to do both of those things. That means both of those things are possible for you.

If you open yourself up to believing that anything you truly desire from again, a healthy, abundant place, you have the capacity to do right now while you desire it, and it doesn’t have to be stressful and overwhelming, you can have fun with it, then I promise you’re capable of achieving so much more in your life than you are right now. This is true of every single one of us. I’m barely scratching the surface on what I think I’m capable of. And only because I’m not perfect at truly understanding my desires and then truly believing that I have the capacity to do all of them. If you can understand what you desire and believe you have the capacity, you will create it in your life. Okay? So again, there’s a lot of other tools I’ll be teaching you in better than busy.

And for those of you already signed up for Better Than Busy, again, it comes with my planner that everybody always wants. We’ve been making this planner for several years now, and every year, people after they use it, they’re like, when can I get that planner again? Because it’s a very specific layout inside that works the way the human brain works. And yes, I know some of you are like, hello, we have online calendars now. I still use an online calendar, but I use this planner in conjunction with it because of how well it allows me to work with my brain instead of against my brain. And so again, if you bought the planner, you are already signed up for Better Than Busy because it comes with this five-day challenge. So make sure you’re checking your email. On January 2nd, we’ll be sending out all the details about where to come to log in and participate. And again, for those of you that want to join us, you’re going to go to JodyMoore.com/busy. But I’m not done. I got more I want to teach you today. Okay?

So we talked about the behaviors a little bit. Let’s talk about the thoughts and emotions, the internal work that needs to get done. What you’re thinking, everybody, listen up. What you’re thinking will either energize you or deplete you. Okay? Let me say that again. If you’re feeling busy and you’re feeling depleted and you’re feeling tired, what you’re thinking is contributing to that more significantly than anything else, because what you’re thinking can either energize you or deplete you.

So if you are thinking, I want you to think back to a project that you’ve done at some point in your life. I used to sew a lot. And sometimes I would start on a project that was so much fun. I did not want to walk away from it. Okay? I would put in so many hours and work so hard, and I would stay up so late at night and get up early in the morning and want to work on it again first thing. You know why? I was thinking, this is fun. This is working. Or sometimes it was, I’m going to figure this out. This is going to turn out great. I can’t wait to see what this looks like in the end. I’ve got this. This is going to be awesome. I’m good at this. I’m doing this. I’m figuring this out. I think I can do this. All of those thoughts generate energy, and then we actually want to stay focused and work really hard from that place. Okay?

I think about playing the piano. I mentioned that I like to play the piano sometimes. Well, guess what? When I was a kid, my mom put me in piano lessons, and I did not want to play the piano at all. I hated playing the piano. I did not like the type of lessons I was in, and I just, I didn’t want to do it. And so when it was time to practice the piano, it felt like drudgery, right? Because my thoughts were, I hate this. I don’t want to do this. Why is she making me do this? I wish I didn’t have to do this. And so, I don’t know how long she had me practice, 20 minutes, maybe 30 minutes, and the whole time it felt so long and it was so painful.

Well, now I sit down to practice the piano, and I can play for a couple of hours and then wish I could keep going longer because I’m not thinking the same thoughts. It’s not practicing the piano that makes you feel overwhelmed, stressed, or busy, that made me miserable as a kid. It was what I was thinking and believing at the time.

Now, does this mean that with all the things you got to do in your life? Because I know some of you are like, that’s great if you’re practicing the piano or you’re working on a sewing project, Jody, but I’m changing stinky diapers or I’m taking care of special needs kids or an elderly parent or I’m working at this job that I hate or whatever. I know that you’re doing a lot of tasks that are not the same as practicing the piano and sewing. Okay?

So this doesn’t mean that you have to be thinking, this is going to be awesome. I’m so good at this. I’ve got this. I can’t wait. But my guess is that there are some areas of your life at least where we could shift your story in some way. And we could generate more energy for you instead of depleting it. You don’t even have to do this with all the areas of your life. You can still hate some of it. But if you take the ones that are available to you, that are possible for you to make a shift, in other words, you already believe something more energizing, you’re just not defaulting to that and you’re not managing your brain, then you will shift and create more energy for you in your life instead of depleting it.

So let’s look at an example. Recently, I had a client say to me, well, I just get really overwhelmed and stressed when I’m getting in the car with my kids at certain times when they’re all tired and hungry and they’re fighting and it’s nap time, and I get really overwhelmed and stressed. Anybody relate to this? I don’t have kids in that phase anymore, but I remember when I did. And the reason we feel stressed in that situation is not because the kids are crying and hungry and fighting and tired. The reason why is our thoughts.

So for my client, she, her thought was, “Why do I even bother going out? I should have known this was going to happen. This happens every time.” Those were her thoughts, right? Underneath these thoughts, why do I bother going out? I should have known better. This happens every time is this assumption that there’s a problem here and that she’s responsible for solving it, right? And this is what I pointed out to her. I said, okay, so you’re saying that kids being hungry, tired, crying, and fighting as we get in the car is a problem? I just want to ask your brain that.

Has something gone wrong? Or might we decide this is just what kids do sometimes? Kids get tired, kids get hungry. Sometimes they fight, sometimes they cry. It’s okay. This is not a real problem. It’s going to be okay. No one’s going to starve. No one’s going to die of sleep deprivation. The fighting is, you know, as long as it doesn’t get too out of hand, no one’s going to get hurt. It’s okay. There’s not actually a real problem here, and I certainly don’t have to solve it immediately. We’re going to go home and eventually they’re going to get some food and they’re going to take a nap, and this is going to be fine. But for now, it’s okay for them to be tired and hungry and even to fight. It’s okay. I don’t need to solve it right now.

Isn’t that true when we slow it down and we look at it, we all know that’s true. That’s actually kind of normal, understandable behavior at times, especially for little kids. And so we don’t have to go all the way to, this is awesome, I can’t wait to do this, right? In this situation. But my client realized like she could just remind herself, it’s okay for them to be hungry and tired and even to be crying and loud. Nothing is wrong. This doesn’t require an immediate fix. What a full life I have. I want this life. I want to be the mom to these kids. I wanted these kids, and now they’re here, and this is the part where there’s a lot of stimulus happening. There’s a lot of noise, but it’s okay. Everybody’s fine. Because I’m telling you, that will create a different state for you than the first set of thoughts.

So there are likely one to three areas in your life where you could shift your thinking and create more energy, more capacity, you would have more ideas, you would get more creative, or at the very least, you would stop depleting your energy. And we’re going to go through the top ones in Better Than Busy so that you can identify, oh, here’s one that might be available to me. Okay. Now, the final component that I want to give you today of this better than busy process is that you’ve got to work with your brain, not against it. Okay?

So here’s the thing about the human brain. On some level, it’s messy. Here’s what I mean by that. We have conflicting thoughts and desires and opinions, right? Have you noticed this? Like you might have somebody in your life that you think shouldn’t behave the way they do and they get on your nerves and you don’t understand why they are that way. And that’s all true to you. And then on the other hand, you feel really bad for them and you see how they’re struggling and maybe you even know a little bit about their past that, you know, got them to where they are. And you have a lot of compassion and you feel bad and you recognize that it must be hard to be them. Those are kind of conflicting. Like we have compassion and understanding, and then we have resentment and frustration and confusion. They feel like opposite stories, and yet you believe both of them on some level.

This is what I mean by the brain is messy. And so the other thing that’s interesting about the brain is that it resists hard work and it resists focusing because that is hard work for it. The other thing our messy brains do is that they overemphasize negativity because they’re looking out for potential danger, physical danger, emotional danger, et cetera. And so we put a lot of emphasis on negativity. The other thing our brains do is they switch subjects. You ever notice you’re trying to think about something and suddenly you have an idea for something totally unrelated? Like squirrel. That’s how the brain works. It’s messy.

It likes to come up with good ideas on its own timeline, not when you tell it to. Have you noticed this? The moment I need to sit down and record a podcast, I usually have zero ideas what to talk about. If I tell myself, come up with a good idea right now, it’s not going to do it. You know when it’s going to come up with the idea? Randomly in the middle of the night, when I’m in the shower, when I’m in the grocery store, and I overhear somebody talking, or I’m listening to an audio book about nothing related. That’s when the idea comes. So this is what I mean by your brain is messy. And the brilliance only lasts so long, right? It comes in waves.

So this is why I’ve created the planner that I use the way I do. I use it with my digital calendar, but it allows for me to begin with my messy brain and let it be messy and let it thrive in its messiness. I want to capture all that goodness. And then from there we start to organize and plan. There’s a lot of simplicity built into this system, and there’s a lot of flexibility built into this system. It’s a very clean, simple system.

So again, I know many of you already are signed up for Better Than Busy. The response to it this year has been overwhelming. We’ve had to reorder the planner multiple times and we will keep doing so as long as we can. But if you’re going to join me for Better Than Busy, it’s only $49, and we’ll send the planner right to your door and then you’ll get the five-day challenge with me in January. We will also send you the replays of those if you can’t come live. So you got to go to JodyMoore.com/busy and sign up if you want to join us.

So again, we charge $49 because we just wanted to be a no-brainer. The planner is an 8 and a half by 11 really sturdy high quality planner. So you’ll be getting more than your money’s worth if you want to join us. It also makes for a great holiday gift, by the way. A lot of people have told me they’re getting it to give to someone. They’re going to wrap up the planner. It’s really pretty. And then they’ll give them a little note talking about the five-day challenge in January 5th through the 9th to be exact. So JodyMoore.com/busy if you want to join us. Thanks for being here today everybody. I hope you have a holiday season that is better than busy. I’ll see you soon. Take care.

Oh wow, look at that. You made it to the end. Your time and attention is valuable, and I don’t take it lightly that you made it this far. In fact, it tells me you might be like me; insatiably curious about people and life and potential and connection. Maybe you have big dreams but a small budget and no time. You’re tired, but bored. You’re content, but dissatisfied. Sound familiar? Come to a free coaching call and see for yourself what’s possible: JodyMoore.com/freecoaching to register. That’s JodyMoore.com/freecoaching.