You’re Not Too Busy For Love | Crista Beck | TEDxBartonSpringsWomen

Read Crista’s TEDx Talk: You’re Not Too Busy For Love 

And there I was running up the stairs, as if I was chasing a carrot, that was dangling in front of me right out of reach. …and then BOOM!!!

I realized I was was too busy running away from love.

Did you know…that according to a study in Psychological Science in 2010 people actually prefer being busy even if it hurt their productivity…and that many of the activities we engage in are merely justifications to keep ourselves busy?

This over-obsession with being busy as a culture is rooted in our inability to be present with ourselves and our feelings, and therefore is not only detrimental to our ability to attract new love into our lives, have love in our current relationships, but to truly love ourselves.

As someone who has dedicated my life to researching, understanding, and helping people with love, and fixing that part of their life, I have spent a lot of years talking to many highly successful single people who work hard to have it all: The career, the money, the house, they have the great friends, the great family…

EVERYTHING, except love.

On one hand people say, “I want a relationship.”

But on the other hand, I hear people saying, “I don’t have time to date.

As someone who works with busy people to help them put love in their lives, I am here today to tell you:

YOU are NOT too busy for love.

I get that it looks that way, because you may have a lot things on your schedule. But I promise you’re not.

Even though I am a love and dating coach, and some of this is through that doorway, whether you are single or you are in a relationship, you are going to see something for yourself today.

Let’s start by unpacking “busyness” for a second.

In American culture we are OBSESSED with being busy! People wear busyness like it’s a badge of honor and wearing this shiny medal has become a status symbol. Where ever you go, “what you do”, “what you produce” and how “busy you are” is how you define yourself.

I’ve got some research for you.

In a quest to understand this obsession with being busy a team of researchers created a fictional Facebook user, and asked volunteers to look at her posts.

When she posted about working nonstop, people thought she had higher status and more money than if she posted about her leisure time. And they did the same research in Italy – and the results flipped. People with more leisure time were considered to have higher status, than those that were working all of the time.

Now when they published the findings in the Journal of Consumer Research in 2017, one thing was very clear,

Busyness has become a status symbol.

How many of you spend more time posting on social media about how busy you are, and perhaps even complaining about it, than you do posting about that awesome vacation you took last year that cost you thousands of dollars? I know you do. Because busyness is honored more than a relaxing vacation. Add to the fact that, people DREAD idleness and CRAVE a reason to stay occupied. They even created a term for it called, “Idleness Aversion.”

It’s like a disease.

In a report in Science Magazine called “The Challenges of the Disengaged Mind” researchers placed people in a room, alone, anywhere from 6-15 minutes. When asked, mostly all of the participants communicated that it was an unpleasant experience to be alone, doing nothing. Here’s the interesting thing, when given the choice, nearly half of these people preferred to administer electric shocks to themselves, to be able to get out of the room.
People prefer to hurt themselves rather than feel the discomfort of sitting alone for a few measly minutes. That’s crazy.

What most people don’t realize is that the busyness they are experiencing is something they CAN control…..all of this rushing around is self created.

There is a whole lot more research that we can get into, but instead, let’s move from research into reality; into real life…”

For most of you, what you are doing is actually real. You have a lot of things scheduled. What you may be unaware of, and what I am inviting you to consider is that while you may indeed be a busy person, you use “I’m too busy” as an excuse.

Notice ALL the times you say the word busy. Start to interrupt that. Especially when someone asks you how you are are doing.

When I ask someone how they are doing these days, no one ever says “fine” “great” “wonderful” anymore. Instead, I’ll hear anything from “busy” to “crazy busy” to “insanely busy.”

They have the biggest busy badge. It’s a BROOCH at this point. Seriously, If you are insanely busy, you get a full sash and a tiara!

We all do it.

What does it do for us?

It’s so prevalent in our culture. It’s like the water we swim in. We don’t even see it. What are we getting out of it?

Here’s a clue…It’s to AVOID something…..

If you really want to have love in your life, I mean EVERYWHERE in your life, from a romantic relationship, love with yourself, your career, family, body, health, finances, home, and even love in regular daily tasks then just consider you’re avoiding something.

I know that there’s someone sitting in their seat right now thinking…. “Hey, Crista..I am really busy and I am not avoiding anything. And that’s ok, if you think that right now..I get it…BUT…in my professional experience, when a potential client tells me,“I’m too busy to date.” what I hear is, “I’m too scared”

Holding on to “I’m too busy” is a detriment to your ability to attract new love into your life or to experience love in your current relationship. So I’m just going to break it down here…

Busyness isn’t just idleness aversion. My theory is that idleness aversion is emotional aversion. That we are TERRIFIED of our feelings. And emotional aversion leads to romantic aversion, a deep reluctance to put yourself on the court and take action in your love life.

Maybe we experienced a feeling when we were younger, or at the end of a relationship, and decided to never to feel it again, so we do anything to not feel it, which even includes lying to ourselves.

For most people, it takes something to stop us in our tracks to discover it, to discover what we are avoiding feeling. For me, it took an actual accident to interrupt me….

My personal story

Years ago I experienced, like many of you have, the most traumatic breakup in my life.  And why it was one of the most shocking breakups was because I never felt so bamboozled by another human being. I found out that he lived a double life, AND that he was an expert at deception. I was devastated!

A rough breakup like that can literally FEEL like someone died. One day they were in your life, and the next day they are completely gone. And that’s how I felt. I was flipping in and out of many different intense feelings – crying multiple times a day, I don’t know how many pints of Haagen Das I went through…just sitting in the corner…ice cream and tears- It was truly overwhelming and I just wanted to minimize the emotional pain in my heart………So what did I do? After I finished my ice cream? That’s right, I got busy!

I was like a little hamster on a wheel. I got busy with my business, busy setting up speaking engagements, busy binging my Netflix, busy color coordinating my sock drawer. Just

ANYTHING I COULD DO.

I was literally Busy Being Busy.

Remember in the beginning of this talk when I mentioned running up the stairs? Well, let me just tell you, when you don’t deal with what you are avoiding, it WILL catch up with you.

One evening I was at home getting ready for a BIG speaking event that night, my hair was all blown out and curled, my makeup was on point, I just zipped up my grey pencil dress and was rushing up the stairs then (bam)…I flew head first into the wooden stairs.

So, I’m laying there, and I felt severe pain coming from my arm. I looked down and my right arm was hanging, what looked like out of my socket. The muscles were contorted.

In that moment life decided to tell me, “Crista….you are going to slow down and deal with the feelings you have been avoiding and you are going to deal with this now!”

And all I could think of at that moment was…“Ohhhh no. Nope. Uh uh. I’ve got someplace to be. I’m busy!”

So I took my right arm and I popped it back into my socket! And went that that event. Yeah! I went!

“Hello everyone..welcome….yeah…my arm fell out an hour ago…But I’m fine…”

This is perfect example of how far people will go to to not feel their feelings!

Then I got home. It was late at night and I was walking alone up those same stairs that I had just fallen on earlier.

The little voice of my broken heart said, “I’m not gone. You’re not that busy. It’s time to love me.”

And right then, I knew it was time to dig in and do some work.

The accident forced me to deal with my broken heart and to stop running away from it, and to create the space and the time to allow myself to go through all of the stages of grief, the shock, the denial, the anger, the over thinking of what I could have done differently, the sadness, and finally getting to a place of true acceptance.
What happened happened. I shared my heart with this man because I made love a priority, AND I got hurt….and that’s why people choose to be busy as opposed to feel. They are afraid they are going to be betrayed or bamboozled, just like I was.

You know what? I wasn’t too busy to love myself. In fact, from acknowledging and embracing my feelings and emotional pain I found how to CHERISH MYSELF even more deeply. I’ve discovered that: Love isn’t an action that you can just stop doing, or a feeling that you can turn off. Love is naturally occurring all around us and is always there for you when you are fully present.

It’s time to deal with our busyness head on, and restore ourselves to being a presence of love, for ourselves. And once we have that, then we can truly and completely share THAT LOVE with another human being because we are all designed to LOVE and to be connected with other people.

So HOW do we shift?

How to shift from, “I’m too busy ” to having love present in your life?

Great news! It’s super simple, but it’s not easy.

Step 1: Acknowledge that you are being busy…and discover what it is you are avoiding.

And yes, even you, who thinks you are not avoiding anything, I know you are still out there…take a real, honest look at yourself, what feeling are you avoiding by staying busy?

We all have something holding us back. I bet for some of you, it’s some 3rd grade heartbreak you still haven’t gotten over when you saw that kid you liked, who’s name you can’t even remember, kiss someone else. Or maybe in high school when Brad asked Carrie to the dance, and she said yes, even though I liked him first and she knew that!

Point is, we all have something, but, once you discover what you are avoiding, then you can move onto the next step.

Step 2: STOP AVOIDING IT

Pretty simple step….right?

Be open to feel what you have been avoiding…….in an effort to free yourself and allow love to arise in you and your life. Most people don’t allow themselves to feel what’s there because they think life’s going to end – “Something’s going to HAPPEN if I feel it!!” – They get really dramatic about it.

When a little kid has a feeling, they let their feeling out and then they move onto the next thing. I’m excited. I’m sad. I’m angry. They just do it, and then they move on. NOT US!!! We don’t ever let it out…and we are walking around LIKE THIS (picture a restrained and uptight person).

Feelings, like fear or doubt, for example, will come, but that, just like a wave, will pass.

And do you know what’s on the other side of that wave? Opportunities for love, happiness, growth and connection. It’s up to us to embrace opportunity, allow ourselves to feel, and just maybe discover something new and exciting that will improve and enrich our lives.

This is ultimately all about how YOU get to shape your life and actions from LOVE, instead of being too busy to experience it, so stop and take the time to really see what is more important to you.

And never forget, YOU. ARE NOT. TOO BUSY. FOR LOVE.

(To watch this video on YouTube see it here on the TEDxBartonSpringsWomen channel: https://youtu.be/v_z64BxI3Ek )

(Are you a single professional who wants to find love again? Are you not meeting people who are successful or intelligent enough? Tired of the inauthenticity on dating apps? Do you find that dating is time consuming and feels like work? If what you really want is a real connection with a quality person that can evolve into a long-term relationship, then click here to secure your complimentary Find Love Discovery Session.)