Are you hiding from yourself by keeping busy all the time?

Silence can seem so loud
I sang that in a song once and I really really felt it
I used to hate silence to the point where I never ever stopped
because when I did it made me feel so uncomfortable because my mind never shut up and I didn’t really want to hear it
It was deafening to me
I kept myself busy ALL of the time, filled my days with work, going out, having a million hobbies and on the surface I was happy but what I was really doing was running
Running away from myself
Running away from the pain I felt when I listened to me, even for a second
My body would go into complete panic
My heart beating in my throat
My head felt like it just wanted to scream
To hide under the duvet and just stop that noise
What it boiled down too was
I never really liked me, let alone loved who I was
I looked to everything else around me to make me feel good about myself
If I did lots for others that made me a good person
If I got up and went to the gym it meant I wasn’t lazy
If I had a good job, I did ok for myself
If I raise money for charity, that made me a good person
If I didn’t jump to the rescue for my friends and try and protect everyone, no one would love me
If I didn’t tick those things in my day to day, I felt rubbish and just constantly gave myself a hard time
You are fat, you are lazy
You are pathetic
You are not good enough
No one cares
Don’t stop or your world will crumble around you
About 8 years ago, I was sitting in a posh hotel in London with my life coach at the time, we were having a great session and I was saying how much I loved being busy, doing all the things I do and that I just had to keep going
She then asked me this:
What if I said this year you can’t raise money for charity? What if the gym was closed and you couldn’t go for the week and you had to spend time with you, how would you feel then?
My whole body went numb
I felt physically sick
I started to panic
OMG, not just me, without everything else, I was nothing
That was about 8 years ago, I wasn’t ready to hear that then and I don’t think I realised the impact of that question until now
I carried to run after that but I started to realise that I was running, I just thought that it was 'normal' before
I keep running for many many more years until life kept throwing me curve balls to stop and slow down
When I left my job 3.5 years ago, it was the first time I ever really experienced silence
My mind went crazy and everything came to the surface
I knew that it was time and I knew I couldn’t carry on anymore and that’s what started me on my path to awakening
This time in our lives we are being asked to stop, to spend time at home and to strip our lives back to ourselves and to stay in our homes and it’s made me realise how in the past this would have been my worst nightmare
I have changed so much
I would not have coped with this then, I would have gone into complete panic
But I feel so much more content in myself now and in my life and have spent the last few years really getting to know me, all of me
The parts I love but also the parts of me that sometimes just want to hide under the duvet and run away from because that's where your greatest growth is
The thing is whether we are listening or not, that stuff is always there, it affects our day to day, the way we feel, the way we think, the way we interact with others, our jobs. Everything we hold onto is still part of us, it’s just whether we chose to listen and acknowledge it or just to keep running
Are you ready to stop running?









