Lori Deschene of the wonderfully inspirational website “Tiny Buddha” recently provided her readers with the following message about doing nothing.
“We are more than we produce. Even if we feel we have a lot to do, sometimes doing nothing is the healthiest choice of all. We owe it to ourselves to be patient with ourselves. Even if we feel we should be doing more, we’re doing the best we can. We can only grow from right where we stand, but first we have to accept it.”
It’s strange how somewhere along the line we’ve been conditioned to believe that taking some time to recharge and gather our thoughts is a bad thing – that it’s nothing more than a waste of time. I’ll admit I’m an offender.
At any given moment my to-do-list reminds me of all the tasks I need to address and take care of so I can gain the satisfaction of being able to cross them off. I can’t explain to you the guilt I feel just sitting around the house doing nothing with that list permanently ingrained in my head.
But as Lori says, “we owe it to ourselves to be patient” – sometimes you need to step back from the chaos that surrounds our lives and allow ourselves to just “be”. Sometimes that means doing nothing at all.
Maybe it means sitting out in the backyard listing to the birds and enjoying the summer sun or curling up on the couch to watch your favorite movie. Whatever you choose we all deserve some time to catch up and refuel so we can be the best person we can possibly be.
