More on Doing More

A couple of weeks ago, I posted about the concept of doing more versus taking time for self-reflection. Later I ran into this TedX talk by Bethany Butzer. It helped me understand a little bit better about how stepping back and examining our values is more helpful than just trying harder at what we’re doing that feels so hard to do.

In Brene Brown’s example she was trying to give more to people in need in an effort to feel better. Later on she realized that she was trying to solve for the wrong problem. She thought her problem was that she felt like she wasn’t giving enough, but the real problem was that she was uncomfortable with her own neediness. Her neediness was in different areas than those asking for money, but it was need either way. If she hadn’t done the introspection then she would have always had this feeling she wasn’t giving enough, and would have just kept pushing harder and harder until she burned out.

I think the same way as Bethany Butzer, that we have to be brave to do what we feel called to do when we look inside of ourselves. Others may disagree with us, but if we all did what we felt called to do, I am confident that the world would be taken care of.

Like Bethany Butzer says, this doesn’t mean that we’ll be happy all of the time if we follow what we’re meant to do. It just means that when we step back and really examine what we’re doing, that we’ll either see that it aligns with our values and we’ll have the renewed motivation to keep going, or we’ll see that it doesn’t align with our values and we can let it drop out of our lives.

What could you let drop out of your life?