The Soulful Leader Podcast
The Soulful Leader Podcast
Is Busy Your Badge of Honor?
You feel the need to constantly ‘do’, to be in motion. You feel guilty when you stop, rest, or need a break. Why?
The simple, and uncomfortable answer is that being busy hides our deeper fears. We use it as a safety blanket for our egos even though it really signals burnout and walls us off from intimacy with others and with ourselves.
Today, Maren & Stephanie dive deep down the rabbit hole of personal value starting with a classic parable that reframes wealth and invites in enoughness, presence, and choice. They also talk about the difference between trading time for money and creating value NOT measured by hours - a pivot that changes more than pricing; it rewrites self-concept.
Big changes like retirement, layoffs, empty nests, and even an unexpected injury can strip away those roles we hide behind and put us face to face with who we are when the calendar goes quiet.
If you are squirming in that experience (or want to avoid feeling so lost), this powerful episode is for you.
This conversation will meet you where you are and walk with you to where you want to be.
If this resonates, follow the show, share it with a friend who needs permission to exhale, and leave a quick review to help others find us. Your stories and experiments matter.
We’d love to hear— what changed when you tried “enough?”
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In a world where we have everything and it's still not enough, we're often left wondering, is this really it?
Maren Oslac:Deep inside, you know there's more to life. You're ready to leave behind the old push your way through and claim the deeper, more meaningful life that's calling you.
Stephanie Allen:That's what we invite you to explore with us. We're your hosts, Stephanie Allen and Maren Oslac.
Maren and Stephanie:And this is the Soulful Leader Podcast.
Stephanie Allen:Yay! Hi, welcome to The Soulful Leader Podcast. I got a question for you. Who are you when you're not busy? Like what goes through your mind? Do you know what to do with your time and your energy? And do you mindlessly start just wandering, distracting yourself, trying to fill up that time? Or do you beat yourself up thinking, there's gotta be something I should be doing. I shouldn't just be relaxing and resting. I feel guilty. Well, you know, I can totally relate because I I don't know who I am when I'm not busy. I'm always thinking I gotta have the next project on the go. There's gotta be... I don't want to waste time. And I thought we'd unpack that a little bit today. And Maren, I think you've got a really good story that kind of leads into that.
Maren Oslac:One of our mentors, we had heard the story from him. I know it's not... he didn't originate it, but Roger James Hamilton, who we've both worked with, had told us this story. And it's the story of the fisherman and the businessman. So imagine a gorgeous beach, and there's a fisherman sitting by his boat. He's playing with his kid, he's on this gorgeous beach, his fishing pole is resting against the boat, and it's the middle of the day, right? And this wealthy businessman, he's walking down the beach and he's relieving the stress of his own workday, and he sees the fisherman and he's curious and also horrified because the fisherman to him is wasting his day, right? That's that's what you were just asking about, right? Like, who are we when when there's nothing to do? And so the businessman asked him, why aren't you out fishing? And the fisherman looked up and he was a little startled and he smiled and he said, well, because I've already caught enough fish for one day. And the businessman like does not compute, right? He's like, well, why don't you go out and catch some more? And the fisherman, they're talking two different languages, right? So the fisherman is like, well, what would I do with them? Businessman says, you could earn extra money, and with the extra money, you could buy a bigger boat, you could go into deeper waters, you could catch more fish, you could hire more people, you know, you could make enough money to buy nylon nets. You could catch more fish, make more money, and then you could maybe you could own two boats, maybe three boats. Eventually you could have a whole fleet of boats and be rich, like me. The fisherman looks at him. He thinks. He says, what would I do then? Businessman is like kind of non-plussed. Like, what would you do then? You'd really enjoy life. The fisherman looks back at him kind of really confused and says, what do you think I'm doing now?
Stephanie Allen:Yeah, how how often have we thought more is better? And that if I'm not busy, I'm, you know, I'm being idle and I'm wasting my time, my life, my energy. And yet, you know, we can get on that treadmill and feel like we're going nowhere, just wasting all kinds of energy and time. And I just I think about that because and I started with that question of like, who are you when you're not busy? Like, what goes through your mind? What happens?
Maren Oslac:You know, and I think that that's the question that people in transition ask themselves. And actually, that's the question I wish they would ask themselves, because instead we tend to go into a depression. So I think about people who retire or maybe get fired, or they're empty nesters, and the stuff that they had keeping them busy and on that busy treadmill is no longer there. So then their identity goes away. And that's what you're talking about. It's like, what's your identity beyond what you do? What you are paid to do?
Stephanie Allen:And you know, we all got a little taste of that. Like when the pandemic happened, we were kind of you know locked down and into our own little houses, and we heard the word pivoting a lot. It's like, okay, well, I can't do this, so I'm gonna do that instead. Like, what would it be like to just stop and not try to figure some sort of emergency plan that you've got to stay busy because then, like you said, the identity. It's like, God, I gotta keep maintaining my identity. Well, what if you didn't?
Maren Oslac:What if that's not your identity? Like, what if that's not who you are? What you do is not who you are. Another interesting thing is you know, it's like we, I, our identity is attached to this trading time for money thing.
Stephanie Allen:So say more about that. Yeah, because trading time for money. Right?
Maren Oslac:That's what we're trained to do.
Stephanie Allen:Hourly wage.
Maren Oslac:An hourly wage. Part of I think, that part of having this, you know, we were talking earlier. Stephanie and I were talking about busyness as a badge of honor. Which really, I think I know when we were talking about it to our own team, they're like, oh, that's me, right? I'm busy, I'm such a busy person, I'm important, I have this value. And we were just talking about self-identity. And I think that that's a big part of our identity, of our personal identity is an I'm a busy, important person. So it's a badge of honor. And truly, I believe that busy as a way of life came out of this concept of training time for money, an hourly wage. Because one of the things that you'll notice is that the wealthier you get, the less you're inclined to trade time for money. What I mean by that is when you're an hourly worker, you're expected to do constantly.
Stephanie Allen:Right.
Maren Oslac:So you have this concept of being busy. As you become wealthier or you become better at your craft, you'll often times quote, instead of an hourly rate, you'll quote, here's how much it costs to get the job done.
Stephanie Allen:Yeah, not really being very definitive of whether it's gonna take 4 hours 40 hours. It doesn't matter. This is the value of getting that job done.
Maren Oslac:Right.
Stephanie Allen:So I've said, yeah, I've said that to other people too. It's like, I don't really care if it takes you 10 minutes or if it takes you 10 hours, but I just need to have this done because I can't do that. I don't have that skill set. So you could just twiddle your thumbs for as long as you want, but don't send me an hourly rate because then I'm gonna be breathing down your neck and I'm gonna be like, wait a minute, how many hours does it say? Like, well, what are you doing for those hours? And then it takes them an hour to define. Well, you know, I had to set up the spreadsheet, and then I had to, you know, I took 15 minutes here to do that, and I did 15 minutes to like, oh my god, that takes so much time and I just get the job done. I don't give a shit. Really? Just get it done.
Maren Oslac:Yeah. What I like about that is that the value changes from the amount of time that I'm putting in. Am I being busy to the amount of value that I'm bringing to the table? And we'll more go ahead.
Stephanie Allen:No, I say that that's the whole thing is the value. When I think of even the word wealthy, we tend to think of dollars, like how much money you have in a bank or have liquidable cash or you know, equity or something. Instead of like looking on so many other levels than just the physical.
Maren Oslac:Just like the story. It's like for the fisherman, he's already . To the businessman, he doesn't have the money, but he's gonna go through all of these hoops and jump through all this stuff to get back to where he is, right? So, like I'm really enjoying my life already. I'm already wealthy.
Stephanie Allen:So, you know, this reminds me of a time within myself. Like just recently, when I broke my arm and I had eight weeks that I was in a cast and couldn't do my hourly wage job, essentially, trading time for money. And I had to sit and be still because there was a lot of things I could not do, couldn't even open a can. I couldn't do anything because it was my dominant hand. And I'm like, okay, I could feel the agitated part inside of myself going, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, what am I gonna do? How am I gonna be able to make my ends meet? And like there was this rant that went on inside myself, fear, anxiety versus just being able to calm it down. Yeah.
Maren Oslac:Did part of you wonder if you still had value?
Stephanie Allen:Yes, most definitely, yeah. I mean, and fear of the future, fear of the unknown. So my relationship to that value of like, I am only as good as what I can produce, versus having that that whole paradigm shift because what had happened in those eight weeks is I actually really enjoyed my time. I actually did when I finally let myself to have that, to just enjoy being. And the I mean, no wonder I gained 10-15 pounds. It's not that I wasn't moving, I was totally being able to move, but people were so generous. It's like it's hard to move, it's hard to hit a moving target. And so when I looked at my own underpinnings of my thoughts, it's like as long as I'm moving, as long as I'm doing, I have value and I'm safe. If I am still, then I'm not safe. That's where that underpinning false belief would come from. Instead, what I found when I was still, it allowed people to actually give to me. And I had space to connect with them and receive it. And when I hear people saying, oh, I just don't have money, or I just don't have time, that busy being busy, it's like it's almost like a message of saying, oh, I'm just so important. It's like an ego trip, right? I'm so important that you, you know, you can't, you can't touch me, or you can't hurt me, or you can't, whatever.
Maren Oslac:Right.
Stephanie Allen:Instead, or just leave me alone. It's like a boundary. It puts up a boundary. Like, don't mess with me, don't bother me. But instead, I think their soul is really saying, I'm needing help, and I don't know who I would be if I stopped this story that I'm too busy to receive.
Maren Oslac:It's such a vulnerable place, it's very vulnerable, you know, in our society that values busy-ness, right? As long as I'm going, going, going, going, going. And that's where, like, I was listening to the Executive Exhale Podcast, and the woman on there, Tammy, she used that term of busy-ness as a badge of honor, and she said it's one of the signs of burnout, and it caught my attention. And I thought, we really do wear it as a badge of honor, and like you were just saying, it's a safety net for ourselves, because if we're busy, then we don't have to address stuff. We can tell somebody, oh, I can't do that, I'm too busy.
Stephanie Allen:And well, we can't have intimacy at all. And what I mean by intimacy, I'm talking you can't have connection with another person, right? Vulnerability, and you definitely don't have connection with your true self inside. Yeah, there is no 'into -me- I- see', because you're too busy. And so, why that is a really big problem is that you just keep doing the same old, same old, getting what we would think the same old results. But actually, when you keep doing the same old, same old, it actually gets worse. You gotta, we gotta evolve, we gotta change, we gotta, you know, tweak it. In order to have mastery, we need to keep reiterating it, reflecting, self-reflecting, and asking yourself, you know, why am I... why is it so important that I'm busy? What is it protecting me from?
Maren Oslac:I think you bring up a really good point because we assume that that busy-ness is in the outer world, right? Like, oh, I'm doing this and I'm doing that. I was talking to a woman this morning who said, I have space in my calendar. Like my calendar is not full, my head is full. I have no space. I wake up in the morning and my head is it's going, right? And so that inner, you know... it's like we can't we can't change somebody else, you know. Like lots of people have talked about that and gone down that road. We still try, right? And we can't change somebody else. The only person we can change is is ourselves, and that's the good news, right? That we can change our entire life by going inside and changing a few things inside. And what would it look like? I this goes back to your question. It's a different version of the same question that we started with. What would it look like to have space to not have to cram so much into your mind, into your day, into your like the itty bitty shitty committee constantly talking? Could you be without that and do without that? Right? Both those things, be and do.
Stephanie Allen:You know, a great wisdom of spiritual beings would say how you make love, how you use your time, and what you do with your life force, your your life energy, your money. So time, sex, and money are how you do one thing is how you do everything. So if you have a lot of time, but you don't have a lot of money, and or and or a lot of like sexual connections, you know, physical intimacy, how are you? What are you doing with your time? Where are you investing it? Or are you spending it? And you can use that for each one. So if you can say, well, you know, I don't have a lot of time, I don't have a lot of sex either, and money, you know, money is like, you know, kind of tight too. Pick one because how you do one is how you do everything. So there's a there's a thread, there's a commonality of like what you think and what you believe and how you behave in each one of those areas. And if you change one of those areas consciously to actually rewire them, you will actually change all of them. And your life will be absolutely extraordinary. Because it's meant to be extraordinary, and you will be wealthy. And I don't mean just financially, although that will be part of it too. There's more than enough. W e're not told that. The messages in our mainstream consciousness is like you are not enough. Buy more, do more, have more. And so then what? We could be that fisherman at the end of the beach and say, well, wait a minute, I'm already there.
Maren Oslac:Well, and that's the thing, is it's so fascinating to me that it it's a it's a circle of, well, I'm not enough, so I need to have more, that still doesn't fulfill us. So I still feel like I'm not enough, so I need to have more. So I'm not enough. And you saw that in the fisherman's story. The businessman, well, then you could do this, and then you could do that, and then you could do the other thing, and then and then you'll be a good enough person to retire and have what you have now. And the fisherman's like, heck no, like I'm good enough now. I have that, I don't need to jump through all of those hoops, I don't have to do all of that stuff to prove myself. And I think that coming from a place of when we're living our purpose, we come from a place of I want to do it because I'm called to do it, not because I have to prove myself, because I'm not enough. And so it truly becomes a conversation that is completely separate from well, should I be doing or should I be being? Should I do less? Should I clear my calendar? Should I not? You know, like it becomes a what am I called to do and why? It becomes a ' Why' conversation.
Stephanie Allen:And that requires an inner reflection. It does. So maybe this is what we can, you know, explore together this month, this week, this today, is what if you were enough? And I don't just mean say yourself an affirmation, I am enough and all is well. I'm actually saying, what if you really truly believed that? Which is to believe something is to be living it. So when you go and you open up the fridge and you're not really hungry, you're actually bored, and you look at all the food and you say, because I've done this one, I know this one. I could say, what if I am already full? Like what meaning I'm already fulfilled in my life. I have enough. And it's a little bit of a gratitude practice, but already knowing that you have enough, what a great slow down and make space within yourself, or you're you're inclined to buy something, or you're inclined to work longer hours, to ask yourself why. And if I was already enough, if I was already enough, would I make this action or take this, you know, make this action or do or I have this choice? What would you do differently?
Maren Oslac:I love that exercise because well, I love that exercise if you can do it without shame. So what I mean by that is, you know, you're about to, you know, binge on Facebook or scroll, you know, doom scroll or you know, binge on Netflix thing like I did last night. And asking that question, not so that you change your behavior. You may, or you may not, and not so that you shame yourself of like, oh, here I go again. I don't even want to deal with it, and then you check out even more. So, what I did last night was... I had food poisoning and I tried to sleep. I couldn't sleep, and you know, my body was spewing from both ends. And I felt so uncomfortable and I couldn't sleep and I couldn't focus. So I was like, all right, I just want to binge something, and I did it consciously. I allowed myself to binge. I watched this wonderful show on Netflix called The Residence, which I highly recommend if you guys are out there looking for something to watch, to binge. And I did it from a place of I know that's what I'm doing, and I'm doing it consciously. And it was amazing how different the show was. I wasn't checked out of the show, I was checked into it. And I went to sleep with all kinds of ideas of how to listen better and you know, like productive things for myself, you know. So that's what I mean by do the exercises Stephanie mentioned and do it with intention and awareness.
Stephanie Allen:Be present to it, be present to what even comes up within you if you feel uncomfortable, if you want to like fight yourself on it and you're like, no, I'm gonna have it anyway, I'm gonna do this anyway. Like, what comes up? Because emotions also are like energy emotions. So that is our life force. Energy is a lot of power, emotions a lot of power. So when you can tune it in with an emotion that is empowering and nurturing, like Maren said, you know, don't shame yourself. Allow yourself to be curious and be excited about even uncovering something. That's when things can shift and things can change. And watch your life slowly, little bit by little bit, it starts to move in a completely different direction, a direction that you may not have even noticed or would have noticed in the past, but that you are actually in control from an internal place rather than always being bombarded from the outside world telling you that you're not enough.
Maren Oslac:Yeah, controlled by belief systems like busy-ness is a badge of honor that are, you know, as she as this woman Tammy said, it's a it's that's a sign of burnout. So if you're one of those people like me and like our team that you know, kind of aligned with that and went, oh, yeah, raised my hand. Yep, I have busyness as a badge of honor. I keep myself busy so that I don't have to look at things in life and you know, all the reasons, maybe start exploring that. And I love the exercise that Stephanie gave because it's something that that you can do. Please do it with kindness. And then let us know what came up for you. Is that is that something that you feel for yourself? Do you use busyness as a badge of honor? We would love to hear from you. So if you're one of those people who has raised your hand and been like, oh yeah, I have busyness as a badge of honor in my life, we would love to hear from you. What are your thoughts on today's podcast? And was it helpful? Did you try out Stephanie's exercise? Or, you know, is there is there another exercise that you use for yourself? You can find our podcast at www.TheSoulfulLeaderPodecast.com. You can find me and Stephanie on Facebook and on LinkedIn and on YouTube at the Soulful Leaders. We'll see you all in two weeks on The Soulful Leader Podcast. Thanks for joining us.
Stephanie Allen:And that wraps up another episode of The Soulful Leader Podcast with your hosts, Stephanie Allen and Maren Oslac.
Maren Oslac:Thank you for listening. If you'd like to dive deeper, head over to our website at www.TheSoulfulLeaderPodcast.com.
Stephanie Allen:Until next time...