I was talking to my dear friend and fellow photographer, Sarah, as I so often do… And the topic of busy season came up. Every year the beginning of the year rolls in and business is slow… January, February… sometimes into March or April – the sessions only trickle in. And we photographers tend to worry, “What if the phone doesn’t ring this year?” It’s a natural worry – we have bills to pay and we can’t pay them if clients aren’t coming through the door. And then every year, without fail, September, October, and November hit and it feels like we’re running a marathon at break neck speeds! I think it’s normal for us to take on all this work because we know in a couple months it will be slow again and we’ll need that surplus to help balance out our finances. So we put our blinders on and focus on making it to that finish line.

But I started thinking about busyness in general. The idea that being busy is often misinterpreted as being successful. This is very true in the photography world. So often we will look at photographers facebook pages or blogs and see session after session after session. And assume that just because that person is incredibly busy that they are successful. We might become envious seeing all the clients they are getting to work for and wonder why our phone isn’t ringing like theirs. But the reality is we have no idea if that photographer is actually successful. They might be overworked and underpaid. They might be feeling stressed out, burnt out, and overwhelmed. We don’t know what goes on behind the computer screen… Success is more than simply being busy….

My family is huge into basketball. So I have heard many a John Wooden quote. If you don’t know who John Wooden is  – he is revered as one of the most successful coaches of all time. He won ten NCAA national basketball championships–and seven in a row in a 12-year period—as head coach at UCLA. When people would ask him what his ”secret” to success was, Wooden would invariably say that one of the key factors was to never confuse activity with accomplishment. You can show up to work or life or practice every day. You can go through the motions of answering emails, filling out reports, making dinner or running drills. But if you don’t set and achieve your goals each and every day – then you’re just spinning your wheels. Activity does not equal success.

And look at us… how many times have you asked someone “how are you?” and their response involved how busy they are. How often do you reply to that question in that same way? It’s ingrained in us. We need to be parents, and entrepreneurs, and social with our friends. We strive to be good sons and daughters to our parents. We need to be involved in our church and on the PTA. And sometimes it feels like we’ve begun to believe that if we’re not busy – we’re not truly living. But what if that’s not the case? What if our busyness is keeping us from living? What if we’re missing out on the most important parts of life because we’ve allowed ourselves to believe that how busy we are determines how successful we are?

When I’m feeling particularly overwhelmed by the busyness of life – I force myself to whittle out some time for yoga. Yoga gives me the opportunity to reconnect with my body, to slow down and focus on nothing but this moment right now. It was during one of my yoga routines that I first heard Deepak Chopra state “We are human BEINGS. Not human thinkings or human doings or human feelings. Our essential nature is just to be…” And that statement resonated with me so much that I made sure to write it down. And now I seem to have found a time that makes perfect sense to share it all with you…

So I have to ask… Have we forgotten how to simply be? When you get home from work at the end of the day, are you rushing off to take kids to dance class or soccer practice? Are you coming home from your full time job to immediately start working on a part time business? Are you so exhausted and spent that you fail to take the time to stop… just stop… and watch your daughter laugh and giggle as she plays? Have you taken the time to ask your son how his day at school was… and really listen to what he has to say? When was the last time you sat on the couch and cuddled with your significant other? Are you getting to BE a part of your family or are you so BUSY rushing from one thing to the next that you’ve become a chauffeur or event planner for your family?

We need to wash away this illusion that busyness is a sign of our success. We need to quit telling ourselves that we should feel guilty because we’re not working on that paper or editing that session or doing that workout. We need to start giving ourselves permission to just BE… to be present in our own lives. To allow ourselves the space to figure out what our definition of success is. Whether it’s being super busy in our jobs or spending time enjoying life with our families or creating art or reading a book or heck – taking a nap. And we need to stop assuming that someone else’s busyness has any bearing on our life or our success. I know that I for one, need to continue working on being a better human BEING, instead focusing on all my human DOINGS.