Breaking Free of Busy: A Mumʼs Guide to Living with Ease and Confidence

By Susanne Gertsmyer

Are you stuck in a constant cycle of busyness?

For every woman who is holding out for the next season when life will slow down, help is at hand right now. Through self-discovery and detailed strategies, Breaking Free of Busy: A Mum's Guide to Living with Ease and Confidence, empowers you to live life at your own pace, f

• Language: English
• Publisher: Susanne Gertsmyer
• Release date: Feb 5, 2024
• ISBN: 9780645965117

Book preview

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© 2023 Susanne Gerstmyer

susannegerstmyer.com

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations.

Cover & interior design by Typewriter Creative Co.

Busy mode graphic illustrations by Miles Mazzocato

ISBN 978-0-6459651-0-0 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-0-6459651-1-7 (eBook)

Disclaimer

This book contains the ideas and opinions of its author and is not providing mental health advice or any other professional advice or services. This book is general information only and is not intended to provide specific guidance for particular circumstances, and it should not be relied on as the basis for any decision to take action or not take action. Readers are strongly encouraged to talk to their doctor or a mental health professional about their concerns as the information provided in the resources are not a substitute for proper diagnosis or treatment by an appropriate health professional.

Contents

Disclaimer

Introduction

Part 1 - Laying The Groundwork

Chapter 1 - Understanding Busy

Chapter 2 - Busy Beliefs

Chapter 3 - When You’re in Overwhelm

Part 2 - Banishing Busyness

Chapter 4 - Recognising When You’re Too Busy

Chapter 5 - What’s Driving Your Busyness

Chapter 6 - Doer Mode

Chapter 7 - Striver Mode

Chapter 8 - Pleaser Mode

Chapter 9 - Worrier Mode

Chapter 10 - Avoider Mode

Chapter 11 - Missing-Out Mode

Part 3 - Your Too Busy Toolkit

Chapter 12 - Mental and Emotional Load Mastery

Chapter 13 - Sharing the Practical Load

Chapter 14 - Reducing the Practical Load

Chapter 15 - The Saying No Masterclass

Chapter 16 - The Four Investments

Conclusion

Endnotes

Resource Guide

Words of Thanks

Introduction

Way Too Busy

The first thought that came to my mind as I saw my husband relaxing on the couch was, It must be nice!

It was Saturday afternoon, and there was a temporary reprieve after a morning of kids’ sport. We’d headed out separately that morning to divide and conquer so we could get kids to different places. But any sense of teamwork evaporated as I watched my husband scroll through the news on his phone.

My brain was busy calculating when we’d help our kids with the science projects that were due on Monday, whether we needed craft materials (or a PhD), and the best time to take our son to choose a birthday gift for his friend. I was also aware that a neighbour was coming by to borrow our picnic table (currently filthy), someone would need to buy groceries for dinner, and the yard was a disaster.

My husband scratched the back of his head and asked if I had heard that Apple’s next iPhone was going to come in two sizes. Um. No. At about that moment, a reminder sounded on my phone. It was our turn to bring morning tea to church tomorrow. My shoulders slumped.

In those days, I was constantly rushing, often late, and my brain was rarely in the same place as my body. I was forever something-ing: cooking, driving, fixing, folding, reminding, calling, booking, tidying, ordering, washing, feeding, buying, returning, cancelling, and replacing. I was living at the absolute limit of my resources, and even when I did stop for a break, it felt nearly impossible to wind down and relax.

I lived this way for many years until, one afternoon, as I watched my kids splash in the pool, enjoying our family holiday, a pain in the back of my throat took over my attention. I ran my hand down my neck, thinking somehow I could erase the soreness that had begun the night before. I decided to head off any possible infection with a quick trip to the doctor. I’ll buy something for lunch on my way back, I told my husband as I picked up the car keys and headed out.

By the time I saw the doctor, the pain in my throat was intense, and his face became serious when I ran out of breath trying to finish my sentences. Walking out to the waiting room, I dialled my husband’s number, still trying to comprehend what was happening. The doctor says my throat is severely infected and if it continues to swell, I won’t be able to breathe. I need to be admitted to the hospital. This was not how our holiday was supposed to go. We were both stunned, but there was no denying how horribly unwell I was feeling. Four days later, I had recovered enough to leave the small-town hospital, and our family headed home.

My throat healed completely, but I was left with an overwhelming, post-viral fatigue that lasted more than three months. As I lay in bed, I couldn’t imagine how my work projects were going to get finished, who would take my place at church, or how the house would run. Every part of my busy, diligent, hard-working, invincible self fought it, but it was no use. I couldn’t even sit up in a chair for more than ten minutes without feeling exhausted.

All of the years of busyness and striving had left my body depleted and with no reserves to heal itself. The doctor said that I had pushed myself too hard. There was no alternative than to give my body the rest and care I’d been denying it for so long. It was weeks before I could even empty the dishwasher or tuck my kids into bed and many months before I began to truly recover.

You might not have found yourself with this kind of health crisis, but I’m guessing your busy life feels a lot like mine did in the months and years before I got sick. Maybe these things sound familiar:

Constantly rushing from one thing to the next

Doing all the thinking, planning, worrying, and organising for everyone

Putting off rest and recreation until there’s no time left

Thinking other people have it together while you’re always coming up short

Falling into bed exhausted, knowing you have to do it all again tomorrow

Friend, I want you to know that I get it and you’re not alone. Like so many women I speak to, you want to let go of the endless expectations. You want life to be easier, to be able to wind down and relax, to feel rested and present so you can enjoy all that’s good in your life. You want to feel grounded and confident rather than caught up in comparison. You want to fall asleep at night feeling satisfied, knowing that your day was focused on what was most important and that you’re succeeding at what matters most. You want to finally feel that you’ve done enough, that you are enough.

But how? If you’re like me, you’ve tried following all the advice, reading the productivity books, using the fancy planners, and making one new resolution after another. Maybe you felt a little better for a few weeks or months, but then you ended up right back where you started—overwhelmed and even more discouraged. Like me, you may have thought, What’s wrong with me?

Be encouraged that there is hope. With the right tools and self-awareness, you can get the important things done and feel grounded and at ease in the process. I know because I’ve done it myself.

Breaking the Cycle of Busyness

The turning point for me came as I recovered from my long period of sickness. I found myself sitting opposite a counsellor for the first time. My doctor thought it would be helpful as I began the slow process of getting back to work and family life. To be honest, I wasn’t sure what difference it would make, but I went.

The counsellor gently questioned the way I had been living and challenged me to think about why I was doing so much (beyond having a family and a job!). She spoke as though I had a choice about how busy my life was, and it was the first time I’d ever thought that living differently was an option. I didn’t want to give anything up, but my long illness had scared me into paying attention and convinced me that something had to change.

In the years that followed, I worked on healthier boundaries, tried to make peace with things that weren’t perfect, got more organised, and committed to fewer activities. Life did get less busy for a time, but the changes didn’t last. The fear of getting sick again was my main motivation to slow down, and as the memory of that experience faded, I went back to my old patterns of trying to be and do it all. As I lay awake one night at the end of a particularly frantic week, my mind churning, I started sifting through the various areas of my life—home, work, family, church, friendships. Were there any areas of my life where I was actually winning the battle with busyness? When sleep eventually took hold, I felt defeated. Would life ever get any better?

Frustrated, I went back to therapy and began combing through countless books, articles, and podcasts to try to shed light on what was going on. I discovered that there were crucial insights about busyness that I’d been missing. The reason I couldn’t make lasting changes was because I hadn’t addressed the underlying thoughts, beliefs, and emotions that were keeping me busy.

For example, I still had a giant to-do list because I was uncomfortable with how it felt when I said no. I had to do everything myself because I was too anxious to risk other people not doing things well enough. I had to keep up with what everyone else was doing because I didn’t trust my own judgement. I couldn’t follow through with time-management strategies because I didn’t know how to motivate myself. I didn’t ask for help because I needed other people to think I was on top of things. And I couldn’t stop and rest because I didn’t really believe I had permission to simply be.

If you’re like me and the hundreds of women I’ve interviewed, surveyed, and coached, you’ve tried every way you can think of to get off the busy treadmill. You’ve been determined to get more organised, tried to say no (How come other people seem to be able to do that and you end up doing everything?!), and tried to simplify your life so you have less on your plate, but somehow all those tasks and responsibilities just creep right back on there—sometimes even multiplying in the process. It feels like a losing game.

What I’ve learned is this. You need more than a fresh resolve or a new planner. You need to know what’s going on beneath the surface and driving your busyness.

In order to break free of busyness, you need to recognise the thoughts, beliefs, and emotions that keep you doing too much. You need to know when they show up and how they keep you busy. Importantly, you need to know how to take these hidden influences out of the driver’s seat so you can make choices aligned with your priorities and wellbeing. That’s the key to breaking the cycle of overwhelm and reclaiming a sense of ease and confidence. It’s been my experience, and I believe it will be the same for you too.

I wrote this book to give you a clear process to follow so you can recognise when you’re too busy, understand your underlying thoughts and emotions, and utilise effective strategies to break free of busy. Armed with increased self-awareness and the right tools, you’ll have everything you need to profoundly improve the way you’re experiencing life.

What to Expect and How to Use This Book

After nearly four years of coming alongside women just like you, I’ve boiled my method for banishing busyness down to three steps:

Step 1 —> Recognise when you’re too busy (the sooner the better).

Step 2 —> Identify which kind of busy behaviour you’re stuck in so you can quickly zero in on the thoughts, feelings, and beliefs that are tripping you up.

Step 3 —> Implement the right strategies to address the root causes of your busyness so you can pull back rather than continuing to overdo it.

While I’ve designed the book so you can flip straight to the core of my method in Part II, I highly recommend you begin by taking some time to better understand what busyness truly is by reading Part I: Laying the Groundwork. These chapters will help lay a strong, informed foundation for the work of creating a different relationship with busyness in your life.

We begin in Chapter 1 by taking a closer look at the different layers of busyness—practical, mental, and emotional—and clarifying that busyness is about more than just a bursting to-do list. In Chapter 2, we unpack the Busy Beliefs—patterns of thinking and behaving that keep you stuck doing too much, holding you back from lasting change. For each of the four Busy Beliefs, I show you how to flip the script and begin to see yourself and your life in a new way.

If you’ve picked up this book and you’re drowning in overwhelm, take heart. This is such a hard place to be, and I see you. Chapter 3 offers a list of quick things you can do right away to bring your body and mind back to a more grounded place. If you’re feeling overwhelmed right now, I recommend that you flip to that section immediately and use those techniques to help you find your feet so you can start working through the rest of this book. You can find this first aid kit in Chapter 3.

Once you have a fuller understanding of what busyness is and how to name and overcome the problematic beliefs that underlie it, you’re ready to dive into the three-step method in Part II.

Part II begins with a chapter on how to more quickly recognise when you’re too busy by watching for the Busy Red Flags. Naming these eight common signs that you’re doing too much will enable you to take action before things get really bad.

Of course, it’s not enough just to recognise when you’re too busy. You need a way to quickly and easily diagnose what’s going on—and what to do about it—otherwise, you’re still stuck. Enter the Six Busy Modes. The six Busy Modes are a shorthand way of recognising the common modes of behaviour that we go into when we’re trying to do too much. Each one shows up in a particular way and has its own set of underlying thoughts, beliefs, and emotions that drive it. Once you can recognise which Busy Mode you’ve gone into, you can implement the targeted and effective strategies I provide to combat each one and help you pull back to a more realistic pace. This is your key to breaking free of busy.

Chapters 6 to 11 each focus on one Busy Mode, exploring what it is and how you can recognise it in your day-to-day life. Then, I teach you how to implement specific strategies targeted at the underlying causes of that Busy Mode, giving you the tools you need to identify and address unhealthy busyness both right now and whenever it rears its ugly head in the future. Each chapter ends with some Personal Growth Practices to help you keep developing as a person and cement long-term changes in the way you live and experience life. Throughout each of these chapters, you’ll gain new insight into yourself and start to understand others’ behaviour in a new way too. Most importantly, you’ll open the door to a more grounded and less stressful life, both for you as an individual and for your family.

In Part III, I offer additional tools you can use to address common challenges, like deciding when and how to say no, beginning to share the practical load with family members, and lightening the mental load. These strategies build on the core strategies you already learned from addressing each Busy Mode. You can read all of Part III from beginning to end or read each chapter as those specific challenges arise.

Life Beyond Busy

With these insights and strategies, you’ll be equipped to finally break free of busy and enjoy a life that feels lighter and easier. You will soon find yourself:

Feeling like you’re swimming with the current (rather than against it).

Living within your healthy limits (and not constantly feeling exhausted).

Making the best use of your time and energy (without feeling guilty or second-guessing yourself).

Knowing how to make your practical load lighter (without missing anything important).

Feeling self-assured and clear about your priorities (and less worried about what might go wrong or what other people are thinking or doing).

Feeling calm and grounded in your day-to-day life (rather than frazzled and overwhelmed).

Be assured that none of this requires you to cancel after-school activities, cut back workdays, or live in a fantasy world where your personal chef makes dinner while you learn to play the flute. Nor does it mean neglecting your responsibilities, giving up serving others, or missing out on the fun stuff. In some cases, it may mean doing less, but a lot of the time it will mean doing it leaner—in ways that save mental and emotional energy as well as time.

I want you to know that I haven’t written this book as the guru on the mountaintop who has it all figured out. Nor have I written this book as a mental health professional. I’m like you, just a little further down the road. I’ve learned some things along the way that I wish I’d known sooner, and I want to share them so your life can be easier, healthier, and freer. Because life can be so much better—even in the busiest of seasons.

The really good news is that this isn’t the kind of book that you need to read cover to cover in order to get big benefits. While I hope you’ll be able to read the book—especially Part I—in its entirety, even if you just open the book for five minutes while the pasta is boiling or ten minutes before bed, you’ll find insights you can take away, think over, and apply. Nor does this book require radical and unrealistic changes to your life. It’s designed to be practical help for the crazy life you’re living (the one that won’t wait while you read an entire book about busyness!)—from one who has been there and is still learning.

In our busy culture, slowing down takes practice. If you’re like me, you’ll need to return to the principles in this book every couple of months—sometimes daily if you find you slipped back into old patterns. But by following three simple steps, you can avoid overwhelm whenever it threatens:

Step 1 —> Recognise the Busy Red Flags.

Step 2 —> Identify which Busy Mode you’ve gone into.

Step 3 —> Implement strategies to combat the underlying causes of that Busy Mode.

It is possible to make changes and live differently. Life doesn’t have to be an overwhelming blur lived at a breakneck pace. And you aren’t stuck, even though it may feel like it. Knowing when and why you’re too busy and learning the specific strategies to use will equip you to take control of the pace of your life, rather than ending up thrust into a lane that’s too fast, too stressful, or too overwhelming. You can live differently and enjoy a more grounded and flourishing life, for yourself and for your people.

You’ll begin your transformation by understanding three things:

What busy actually means

The signs that show up when you’re too busy, and

The Busy Beliefs that are keeping you stuck.

Let’s get started.

Part 1

Laying The Groundwork

How did my life get so busy?

Why do I feel overwhelmed when my

to-do list is shorter than my friend’s?

Why do I keep adding to my schedule

when I know it’s already (over)full?

These are the kinds of questions the women I work with have been asking themselves for years—without being able to find any satisfying answers. Each of these questions dances around the real problem: in order to break the cycle of chronic busyness, we have to understand what we mean by busy and address its underlying causes.

In this section, we’ll unpack busyness in a new way. You’ll learn the different dimensions of busyness and the real reason you’re so exhausted all the time (hint: it’s not just about your to-do list). Then, we’ll dive into the four most common beliefs that keep us stuck and how to reframe them. Think of this as tilling the soil for the practical work you’ll begin in Part II.

If you’ve picked up this book and you’re feeling overwhelmed, I see you and I want to offer you a lifeline to help you where you are. In Chapter 3 you’ll find strategies you can apply right away to create the mental and emotional space you need to continue working through the rest of the book.

By the end of Part I, you’ll be thinking about busyness in a new way and ready to go deeper into what’s really driving your busyness and what to do about it.

Chapter 1

Understanding Busy

It’s about More Than Your To-Do List

These days it’s not uncommon for people to respond to a question about how they are by saying they’re busy. It’s a response that says you’re needed, making a contribution, and getting the most out of life. I used to say it too.

During the long seasons when I was overdoing it, I would often say that I was busy not just to show that my life was full but because life felt like such an overwhelming blur that I was like a deer in headlights trying to think of anything more specific to share. My frazzled brain would need a moment to catch up. In the meantime, I’d hope the other person would start talking about something so I didn’t have to sift through the mess in my brain for something particular to say.

Depending on who had asked, I also used to say busy as a kind of catch-all to explain anything I was behind on—phone calls I hadn’t returned or messages I hadn’t yet responded to—all the while doing a quick mental inventory of anything I might have forgotten or not done related to the person I was talking to.

It’s an awful feeling to be living one step behind, constantly exhausted and struggling to keep up with your life. But here’s the thing. Most of us don’t mind having a lot to do. We’re wives, mothers, daughters, sisters, friends, and volunteers, and we wouldn’t have it any other way. We expect to have a full and, to some extent, busy life. But this way of living becomes unsustainable when our lives seem to require more time, energy, attention, and resources than we have to give. That’s when busyness becomes overwhelming and leaves us too drained even to have a proper conversation about how we are.

The difference between having a full life and a way-too-busy life is this: when you’re too busy, your level of activity gets in the way of being fully present, enjoying life, and focusing on what matters most.

Being too busy is like living beyond your means financially and spending more than you earn. Just like with financial overcommitment, when you