So I’m at Universal Studios with Jody, Jasmine and her BFF, enjoying a high school graduation trip. I am outside while the girls go to the bathroom. Jody comes out while I’m looking down at my phone. Are you checking your email? she asks. I deny everything of course. The default response of a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar…

Ironically, I wasn’t…this time. But over the last decade, she would have been right 99 times out of 100. And that thought makes my heart sink.

This is year ten of karmadharma, and every vacation to date, to varying degrees, I check my email. I tell myself it is because I have to stay on top of things, but realistically, it is more of a compulsion to be in the know. To see if any last-minute “emergencies” need tending to. And this, knowing I have an out-of-office email in place and some incredibly competent colleagues there to hold down the fort.

Even when we are closed over the Christmas holidays, I usually end up spending time reviewing the year that passed and planning out what I would like to do/accomplish in the coming year.

So never really a clean break or a pause.

Why is it so hard for me to rest?

I realize it is mostly driven by an unhealthy set of stories I am telling myself.

• I should be further along by now
• I should be more successful
• The business depends on me. It might fall apart without me.
• If only I worked harder and more, it would all work out
• It’s not okay to not be “productive”.

The more I think about it, this goes well beyond just vacation… I seemingly cannot sit down and just do “nothing”. a.k.a. sit and be.

Jody invites me to come sit on the balcony, chat, and just connect. This is something I love doing. It is precious time together. And…..I seem to have some internal countdown timer going where I can only do it for so long.

I could be writing, working, working out or watching a show. Distracting myself in some way.

I notice that Jody is so at peace just being. In contrast, I feel I need to be moving, to feel I am not wasting time.

Yet I watch her and say to myself…

• I could never do that
• Just sit and not do
• I have so much I want to get done in this life

I sit in judgement of the pause…

It feels like wasting time, lazy, unproductive, boring

Got. To. Be. Doing. Something.

“Contributing” is anchored in doing. “Just Being” is wasting time.

Yet I will do so often late at night in front of sports or the show/movie du jour. Such irony. Such a contradiction.

But even that watching of a show…is that rest?…true rest for the mind? I am just consuming more content. More brain activation. More escape. Less presence.

And at a scarier level, watching tv or [insert mindless activity here] is representative of an energetic counterforce to what I know I am called to do. Much like opposing magnets that can’t touch.

Because my calling to serve, to write, to help others is so strong, yet equally scary and intimidating, I fill my life with justifications about why now is not the time to do the thing. Why tomorrow is the day. Or I spend time talking about “the thing” rather than simply doing the thing.

I’m filling the present to get to the future.

So I have decided to flip the switch on “just sitting” as a waste of time and seeing it as an act of courage. As an act of self-care. An act of reflection. An act of integration. An act of coming home.

Just sit in the wisdom of stillness.

I’m not saying this will be easy. This is a lifetime of conditioning to let go of, but I am committed to it.

And as I do the work, I just might find the connection I am looking for. To myself. To others. To the unifying force that unites us all.

In the end, I did not check email one time on the trip for the first time in a decade. It nearly killed me…in my mind…but I did it and I was the better man for it. More present with Jody and the girls. More refreshed when I got back. More ready to tackle the world and be the change I want to be.

As for filling my life with busyness as an avoidance mechanism to the work I am called to do, that is a work in progress.

For now… More rest. Less hurry. Here I come.

So how ‘bout you?

How is your relationship to rest? Any stories around it need some changin’? And any places you might be filling your plate to avoid what you are called to do?